Nov. 2, 2007 - Apples

Apples are one of my favorite things to bake with. We were blessed with a couple of huge boxes of free apples from "a friend of a friend" a few weeks ago. Though they weren't really baking apples, I managed to use them in a few recipes I had been wanting to make for awhile. My mom and I also made a few batches of apple butter and apple sauce, the first canning we had done at a high altitude, which really wasn't that different. And there are still quite a few apples left!

Here are a couple of the recipes I made:

Apple Turnovers

Crust:
1 cup flour
1/2 t salt
1/3 c butter or Crisco
3 oz cream cheese

Filling:
1 1/2 c finely chopped apples
1/4 c sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon
dash nutmeg

Combine crust ingredients like you would a pie crust - first, mix together flour and salt. Cut in the shortening evenly. Then rub in the cream cheese until evenly moistened. Make into 4 to 6 little balls. Chill. Mix together filling ingredients. Preheat oven to 400. Roll out each ball of dough, not too thin, into a square. Spoon filling into half of each square to make individual turnovers. Don't over fill, or turnover will tear. Then fold each square carefully in half, to make a triangle. Seal edges with a fork. Bake at 400 for 20 minutes. If desired, sprinkle with powdered sugar.

I doubled the above recipe, and made eight turnovers. This was my first time making turnovers, and most of them didn't turn out that great looking as the original directions were much "simpler." Because we had leftover Apple Pizza from the night before, we saved them for breakfast the next morning, and they were still good.  

Apple Muffins
2 c all-purpose flour
1/2 c white sugar
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 c apple juice
1/3 c vegetable oil
1 egg
1 c apples, peeled, cored, and finely diced

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Grease 12 muffin cups or line with paper liners. In a small bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt, and mix well. In a medium bowl, combine apple juice (I used some freshly squeezed apple cider), oil, and egg, and mix well. Add dry ingredients all at once. Stir just until dry ingtedients are completely moistened. Batter will be lumpy for some strange reason.  Stir in chopped apples, and fill muffin cups, about 2/3 full. Bake for 18 to 22 minutes at 400 degrees or until toothpick tests done. Cool a minute before removing from pan. If using paper liners, cool completely before eating. Otherwise, the muffin will stick dreadfully to them.

I also made a yummy recipe called "Country Apple Crumb Cake" which has four parts - crumb cake, layer of crumb topping, layer of apples, and remaining crumb topping. But the pan it calls for is much too small, resulting in it overflowing tremendously to the bottom of our oven. So I need to change something in that recipe before I post it. Any ideas? Should I just halve the crumb cake part of it, the apple, the topping, or all? Or make the same amount in a much larger pan?

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Oct. 31, 2007 - Our First Year in Colorado (Warning: Photo Heavy!)

Today is the one year anniversary of when we arrived in Colorado. It has been a very full and memorable year. So I am reviving my poor, forgotten blog to post a quick overview of the highlights of the past year!

We experienced our first "real" winter, with lots of snow - at least, compared to the high desert of California.

I received a GPS for Christmas, and have used it mainly to geocache. I have found about 40 so far, in Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas.

I learned, thanks to our friend Mrs. Colvin in California, how to make pie crusts.

Also, bread at high altitude. I tweaked and nearly perfected a recipe, except recently, I have tried to adjust it to increase the percentage of wheat, and it had enormous air bubbles in each loaf. Is there anyone who knows why it did that?

And, also thanks to our friends the Colvins, I made my first blouse for my mom, which won a 2nd at the local fair. I was surprised it did that well, considering that the flaws the judge noted were not the ones that bothered me the most about it.  

Tried new things

And explored many beautiful places. Do you know how hard it is to pick just a couple of pictures of the probably thousands I've taken this year? I have probably taken more pictures in one month here than I did in one year in California!

Also, some of the many memorable books I've read in the last year, thanks to our wonderful library mainly:

Bleak House, Old Curiosity Shop, and Barnaby Rudge, by Charles Dickens

Wives and Daughters & North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

Up from Slavery by Booker T Washington

Rickenbacker: An Autobiography by Eddie Rickenbacker

Freckles, A Girl of the Limberlost, Laddie, and Song of the Cardinal by Gene Stratton Porter

Crime and Punishment by Fydor Dostoevsky

And others. I'm currently reading Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, Michael O'Halloran by Gene Stratton Porter, and Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell.

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Oct. 20, 2006 - Been Busy

Time has really flown since my last entry. So much for trying to update the "identify this object" weekly! We'll be moving in just eleven days. I'm still amazed that in less than two weeks I'll be living in Colorado, not California where I've lived my whole life.

I had to move the ticker down to the very bottom of the page as it was causing some problems with the sidebar overlapping the entries. I hope everything is fixed with that now. Please let me know by leaving a comment if it isn't.

Last Sunday, my dad and older brother went to San Antonio to attend the Independent Christian Film Festival. My younger brothers, mom, and I went to Fort Tejon's Civil War reenactment.

On the way home, we stopped at a "Last Chance" peach orchard and bought some peaches. I made a peach crisp with some of them. Here's the recipe I used, which turned out quite well:

Old-Fashioned Peach Crisp

Yield: 6 servings

Prep time: 10 minutes (ready in 45 minutes)

Ingredients:

4 cups peaches, cut into bite-size chunks

cinnamon

Topping:

1/2 cup rolled oats

1/3 cup all-purpose flour

1/3 cup firmly packed brown sugar

1/4 cup softened butter

Heat oven to 375 degrees F. Place peaches in an ungreased 1 1/2 quart baking dish. Sprinkle liberally with cinnamon. In a large bowl, combine all topping ingredients; mix until crumbly. Sprinkle crumb mixture evenly over peaches. Bake at 375 for 25-35 minutes, or until peaches are tender and topping is golden brown. Serve warm with ice cream.

I hope, once we move, to update my blog more regularly including the "identify the object" posts. Here is the answer to last time's picture:

It was a leaf hopper - or at least, that's what we call them. I don't know if that's what their "real" name is or not. Please check back in a couple weeks for a new picture.

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Sep. 14, 2006 - Identify This Object - week two

Last Week's Challenge:

Before:

After:

It was bread dough!  The yellow stuff is egg, and the blackish stuff is dissolved sucanat sugar in water. The recipe is from HERE, a true old-fashioned roll recipe. The blog owner is a member of the Sense & Sensibility forum, and posted this in the new recipe cateogry there. I let it rise for an hour before shaping into rolls, and then probably another hour once shaping. After coating with a beaten egg mixed with a little water, I baked them at 350 for 20 minutes.

A couple days ago, I made it again, using half wheat flour and half white flour. It made about two dozen rolls, and that time I added garlic powder to the egg wash. And then I also liberally sprinkled more garlic powder over all of them.

And this week's challenge:

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Sep. 12, 2006 - Dutch Babies

A few days ago, we had breakfast for dinner. I used THIS recipe from the Baking Sheet blog for Dutch Babies, doubled. The strange thing is that it got a tall bubble thing just like in her picture. Dad and Zack had it with syrup and powdered sugar, while the rest of us just did powdered sugar. It was very yummy.

I have, after only four or five months, finally completed mom's Mother's Day gift (her patchwork skirt).  Maybe I'll be able to get a picture soon.

I've had a few more guesses on the Identify This Object picture, besides the comments, including a plate, something burnt, a wet scouring pad, and something with golden raisins in it - but none correct yet.

Also, we're going to be moving from California to Colorado soon! So I've added a ticker to the side counting down until then. My dad was accepted as a pastor of a church in a wonderful town there.

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Sep. 8, 2006 - What Kind of American English Do you Speak?

Your Linguistic Profile:

60% General American English

20% Yankee

15% Upper Midwestern

0% Dixie

0% Midwestern

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Sep. 7, 2006 - Identify this object - week one

Today I took this picture, and thought it would make a neat entry on my blog. So, if I can come up with enough of this type of picture, I'm thinking of making it a weekly challenge - who can identify the following object? I already have a few pictures that I think will work for this. I think this one will be the hardest. Please leave a comment with your guess, and next week I will give the answer along with a new picture. Also, though it may look like something gross, it isn't!  Have fun!

- Heather

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Aug. 26, 2006 - Progress Bars

I've been working on knitting THIS sampler stitch purse pattern for the last few days from the Frugal Knitting Haus website. I am doing each pattern in a different color, using four colors. It's a great way to use up scraps, and practice with circular needles.

On several knitting blogs, I have seen progress bars in their sidebar. I finally found one that had instructions on how to add them. It really is quite easy! Just regular HTML tables, and a little math to figure out how far through a project you are. For some reason, it's not centering them, so I still have to mess with that though. HERE is the link for the instructions.

My current projects, besides the purse, is a scarf, a skirt, and an apron. The scarf pattern is found HERE, and the Edwardian apron pattern is from Sense & Sensibility patterns. That should go fairly quickly, if I actually follow the directions in the correct order like I'm supposed to. I haven't so far, which is probably why it's taking me so long, and giving me things to rip out.

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Aug. 19, 2006 - Vanilla Pudding Recipe

My mom and I are, every morning, taking care of a friend's animals while they're on vacation. They have four goats, one of which has to be milked. The people who do their animals in the evening also have goats, so they just leave the milk there. So we've had a lot of goat milk lately. Another friend gave us the following recipe, which uses a quart of milk, that I made today.

Vanilla Pudding:

1/2 to 1 cup sugar (I used 3/4)

2 Tbsp cornstarch

a pinch of salt

3 eggs

1 quart of milk

2 Tbsp butter

1 Tbsp vanilla

Mix sugar, cornstarch and salt in a large saucepan. Beat eggs in a large bowl; add milk and mix. Pour into saucepan and bring to a boil, stirring constantly (otherwise it will burn). Remove from heat. Add vanilla and butter. Stir well. Serves well warm or cold. Refrigerate when done. Yeild: about 8 servings. For chocolate pudding, add 1/3 of a cup of cocoa to dry ingredients.

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Aug. 19, 2006 - Circular Knitted Facecloth

I finally completed my first circular cloth, using THIS pattern. It took me two weeks, and I did the small one (which really was fairly large - a nice size). Several people have commented while I was working on this, after asking what it was going to be, that it looked more like a doily than a facecloth. Maybe if I used smaller yarn, it could be used as one (whatever doilies are used for...). I took a picture of the front and back, which are nearly identical except for the seam, and after resizing, will add them.

Also, now that I finished my quilt and have my regular foot back on, I'm finishing a 90-minute patchwork skirt for my mom (which will be the forth one now that I've made from that pattern). It was originally supposed to be a mother's day present, but I'm a few months late.

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Aug. 18, 2006 - Lemon Pepper Chicken and Rice Pudding

Tonight for dinner we had lemon pepper chicken from Tammy's Recipes with rice and mixed vegetables. With some of the leftover rice, I made rice pudding from The Little Red Hens blog which only took about five minutes. I added 1/3 of a cup of raisins to it, and it made two servings. My mom and I, who are the only ones who like rice pudding in our family, had it warm. It was very delicious.   

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Aug. 18, 2006 - Banana Scones

A few days ago, I made THIS recipe for banana scones from the Baking Sheet blog. I doubled it, and accidentally mashed (because that's what I usually do when baking with bananas) instead of diced the bananas. It turned out very yummy, and was eaten before I could take any pictures.

Edited to add: I made this recipe again, and took a picture this time.

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Aug. 18, 2006 - A "Princess Bride" quiz

Which Princess Bride Character are You?
this quiz was made by mysti

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Aug. 17, 2006 - The quilt is done!

On Saturday, I finished my rail-fence quilt! It had to go to the fair the very next day, but at least I got it done. I did get a couple pictures of it, but forgot to take a picture of all of it.  The quilting part (by machine) was fun, except that it made my wrist a bit sore for a day or so from moving the quilt around and holding it in place at times. I didn't really like hand sewing the binding to the back, but it did go fairly quickly (and the thread only showed at a few spots).

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Aug. 17, 2006 - Homemade Yogurt

For a few weeks now, I've been making yogurt. Yesterday I made my fifth batch and my first fruit-flavored one. The first time, I tried a method which incubated in the microwave overnight. It turned out good, so next I tried a vanilla flavored one the same way. It didn't set, so I tried the instructions on the Hillbilly Housewife website, using the oven incubation method for about five or six hours (she says to do it six to eight, but I'm impatient )

I have now used those intructions three times, first plain, second time vanilla flavored, and yesterday cranberry flavored using about 1/3 of a cup of leftover cranberry sauce. That batch was a little thinner than the other two. To make the vanilla flavored, I added 1/3 of a cup of sugar before I heated up the milk, and added I think one teaspoon of vanilla when I added the yogurt.

I have a couple bags in the freezer now of plain yogurt from the store which was first frozen in ice cubes. One cube is enough for each batch. I also was able to get mom to buy a huge thing of powdered milk, so I can make several batches of homemade yogurt before running out of supplies.

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Aug. 17, 2006 - Blueberry Muffins

Yesterday, our newspapper the following recipe for blueberry muffins. We had everything for it, so I made today. I changed it just a little bit, by using 1/2 a cup of regular applesauce, instead of the the two containers of blueberry applesauce originally called for.

Blueberry Muffins

Crumble topping:

2 Tbsp all purpose flour                                                          

2 Tbsp wheat germ

2 Tbsp brown sugar

1 Tbsp canola oil

Muffin batter:

2 cups all purpose flour
¼ cup wheat germ

1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda

½ tsp cinnamon
¼ tsp salt

2 large eggs, beaten
½ cup brown sugar

½ cup applesauce

¼ cup canola oil

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup blueberries

Preheat oven to 350F. Lightly oil or coat 12 muffin cups with nonstick cooking spray and set aside. Combine topping ingredients and set aside. Whisk together dry batter ingredients (except brown sugar and blueberries) in large bowl. Combine eggs, applesauce, brown sugar, oil, and vanilla in separate bowl until just moistened. Gently stir in blueberries. Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups. Arrange topping evenly over muffins, using back of spoon to gently press topping into batter. Bake 20 to 22 minutes, or until topping is golden and toothpick comes out clean. Makes 12 muffins.

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Aug. 16, 2006 - A neat way to track blogs

Bloglines.com is a neat website that lets you know when blogs have been updates, so you don't have to check different websites to see. It is free to sign up, and doesn't have any ads or anything. They also have a weather forcast for a week at a time, with more detailed descriptions than most of the weather sites.



Enjoy!

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Aug. 11, 2006 - Taylor Home Inn - Andy Griffith Show replica

Our newspaper today had an article about a Bed and Breakfast in Wisconsin that is a replica of "Sherrif Taylor's" house. The couple who did it even has a dog named after a character on the show. There is a similar article HERE, and their website is HERE. Enjoy! 

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Aug. 6, 2006 - Chicken Gumbo

This recipe was given to me by a good friend of mine from Louisiana. It is very yummy! Be sure to read thru the recipe a few times over before doing it though, especially the directions on making a roux on THIS website.

Gumbo Recipe Step By Step:

Ingredients:

self-rising flour

oil

hot water

1 link of smoked pork sausage

1 hen (or cut up, de-boned chicken meat equivalent to)

seasoned salt

1 to 4 onions, according to taste

hot sauce

plenty of cooked rice

Step by step instructions:

First, chop up onions, chicken, and sausage.Put in a fridge or somewhere so they don't brown before they are needed. Then make a roux (see HERE for very detailed instructions if you don't know how). Use a heavy pot (like a Dutch oven) and remember to stir the roux. Don't leave the roux -- it burns easily. Make more than you need and then use according to how you like your gumbo -- thin or thicker. It is supposed to be rather thin like a soup. Stir and cook it until it is a dark brown -- self-rising flour is preferable. When your roux is dark brown, put in the chopped onins. After this, the roux will get no browner. Put in the onions, according to taste and mix it with your roux. It depends on how much you like onions in your food. Then put your cut up chicken and your cut up sausage (cut thin, maybe a bit less than a centimeter thick) in. Then you put in the very hot water -- let it cover your chicken and then you put in according to how watery you want your gumbo -- you want it rather like a soup consistency. Then you season to taste with seaonsed salt. Put a tablespoon or two of hot sauce -- this is not to make it hot, just to flavor it. Cook it until the chicken is tender (about a half hour). Eat with rice -- it is supposed to be a lot of juice in your rice -- not like a stew, more like a soup. Enjoy!

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Aug. 3, 2006 - Cappucino Muffins and Expresso Spread Recipes

One of the ladies  who started the Homespun Sampler Yahoo group also started another group, titled "Joyful Blessings." Occasionally she posts quotes, recipes, Bible verses, and tips. Back in May, she posted the following recipe, which turned out great when I made it later that month.

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