BAKING, MIXER REPAIR, SNOW DAYS AND CHICKEN TREATS

 

I've had this Kitchen Aide mixer for over 35 years.  I was making a Brown sugar caramel pound cake, 

 

and it died. . . just died. . in the middle of mixing.  It's a heavy batter but this machine has handled much heavier.  I finished the mix by hand and waited for hubby to take a look at it.  After taking it apart (which was very challenging by the way - see pictures)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 we determined that the brushes were just a tad too short.

 

  Ordered some on Amazon for a fix and YAY!!  My mixer is back!  On to my next baking adventure - Halva Apple bars.

We also got some snow at Crumptonland - first snow over 2 inches in a while. Here is a show of the trees in front of the house.

 

 It was pretty coming down and is shallow enough that it will melt relatively quickly.  We are in a terrible cold snap currently so the melting is SLOW - we are also expecting some more snow tonight, what they call a dusting. . . we will see.  My poor chickens are not too fond of the snow.  We got these breed of chicken because they are heat and cold resistant, but they still grumble with the cold as they grumbled when we got over 100 degrees several days last summer.  On cold days I give them a warm treat in addition to their normal feed, as well as giving them frozen blueberries and watermelon rind in the summertime.  They enjoy treats any time, but warm during cold snaps and frozen during heat is their favorite I think.

Well I think that's it for now, I will post a picture of the Halva apple bars next, as well as update on any fun happenings!!  Toodles.

OF WINE, WHEAT AND WHEELS

 

If you have followed our blog, you know that our family has a passion for cooking - especially cooking together.  We also have a passion for wine, and making wine.  Every year we have a Crumptonland Cookie Day during the holidays (basically anytime between Thanksgiving and News Years Day) where we all gather and bake the day away.  This year was no exception.  We start this tradition with a charcuterie board, or as we call it "Shark-coo-chee".  This time we used my moms biscuit board as the place for all the goodies, that way we felt like she was a part of the festivities.

This year we made bread as well as cookies.  Scott made brioche rolls, while we baked some of our favorite cookies - in specific our molasses cookies,

 

 

 peanut butter cookies

 

 and chocolate chip cookies. 

 

 All of the recipes can be found on the blog under Favorite Desserts.

We also tried our hand at Fig wine this year.  We picked the figs from our tree as they ripened, sliced them in half and froze them.  Once the tree had stopped producing fruit we pulled out all of the frozen figs, plus some that we had canned last year and put them in our wine brew bucket.  We bottled the wine just this last week, and I will have to say it turned out great!  I am attaching a shot of a few of the bottles.  We bottled 7 small and 5 large bottles.

Speaking of cooking, we also recently made a batch of our Jewish Penicillin.  We try to keep a couple of quarts on hand and realized that we had given away our last 2 quarts, so it was time to whip up a fresh batch.

And if that isn't enough, we have been trying our hand at shelf stable pickled eggs.  A friend of mine gave me an egg steamer recently.  I had never tried steaming eggs and if you are familiar with farm fresh eggs you know they are practically impossible to peel when boiled.  I tried EVERY method I could find but none worked for boiling fresh eggs to release the shell without destroying the egg white.  Steaming eggs however, well now that's an entirely different ball game.  Works like a charm to release the shell and give you a clean smooth egg!  So I steamed 72 eggs!  Here is a picture of the peeled eggs in the pickling brine.

 

We had tried pickling some at Thanksgiving just to see how they turned out.  Those worked so this last batch we played with the seasonings.  We made 6 different pints, we tried Old Bay in one jar, soy sauce and ginger in another, Dill and standard pickling spices in one, and a few others that I can't recall.

Not only have we been busy in the cooking department, our grandson has found a passion for 4 wheeling.  We had a 4 wheeler when our kids were teens, but sold it after they moved out.  J'man has a small 4 wheeler so decided to open our old trails. 

 

While clearing the trails just before Christmas I found a wild grape vine that J'man had cut from one of the trees.  I had a quick lesson in wreath making with Mojo, and she made her first wreath!

 

 

 

Nick also bought Becca a 4 wheeler for Christmas so the trails will be used quite I bit now I am sure.  We have opened most of the old trails, and are working on a few new ones as well.  The recent rain washed our land bridge away over our creek, so we won't be on the back side of the creek for a while but have plenty of trails on this side of the creek to keep 4 wheelers busy.

Well, that's all for now.  I'll post again soon I hope.  Oh, and I'm continuing to update our recipes - slowly but surely.

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER - AH HA

 

 

 So it's been a WHILE since I've posted - like 2019. Whoopsy.  I am in the process of adding more recipes, per my son's request, so I thought I'd do a quick synopsis of what's been up at Crumptonland.  In December of 2019 my parents moved in with my brother due to health reasons.  

 

We had to clean out their house, list it, and get them settled into his house.  My brother and his wife were a huge blessing in this area as we already had my daughter's family living in the basement here. In 2020, of course Covid put a halt to loads of things, but we kept plugging.  It was a blessing to have my daughter here because we were not cut out of our entire families life as many were.  As it was we could not visit my parents, or Scott's parents nor could my son come over BUT we did have Becca's crew here so that was much better than other folks.  They were able to move out and into their own place in April of that year.  At around the same time Scott's mom started having some health issues (not Covid related, she broke her leg falling from a dizzy spell), so we put on an addition to our house.  We had just signed the paper work for the addition, and sadly she passed away at the end of 2020.  We decided to go ahead with the addition, so in July of 2021 it was complete. Here are some before and after shots.

 

Patio before the addition

 

 

After the addition

  In late 2021 my mom started having some additional health issues.  She was admitted to the hospital in January of 2022.  It was a challenge for my brother and sister in law having to shuffle my father between their house and the hospital, meet with doctors and care specialists AND work every day, so we were working on getting her moved to a facility closer to us. With Scott and I being both retired we thought as a family that it would be the best move for our parents and everyone involved.  We moved my dad in to our house in February of 2022.  We had made arrangements to move my mom the following week, but she passed away the morning they were going to move her.

Dad settled in here pretty well considering he had lost his wife of 64 years. 

 

 We were able to contact most of his former doctors from when he lived at their home in the area and they were excited to have him back as a patient.  He is 95 percent blind, as well as hearing impaired so life can be challenging at times but God has given us this mission field and we tackle it with His guidance daily.  We had been walking daily, up to 4 miles, but his eyes have impaired our ability to walk - so we bought him an exercise bike that he rides daily.

In April of 2023 we purchased 8 chickens!! 

 

Two of my barred rocks, Bertha and Squeaks

My sweet Red Star Rocket - she loves her cuddles

 My grandmother raised chickens and I love having them around.  We have way to many hawks for them to free range but we have a chicken tractor and run that we move around our yard so they can kind of free range.  Speaking of hawks, the chickens got out when the coop door blew open one afternoon and a hawk caught one just as I realized the run was open.  I was able to save the chicken, beat the snot out of the hawk and secure all of them in for the night.  Other than being in shock, the chicken that was caught turned out fine.  We did lose one due to old age at the end of November (we bought 4 barred rocks from a friends who did not know their age, and 4 younger red star pullets from a friend who had an over abundance.)

Not much has happened other than that - oh so brief - catch up.  I am working on adding some of our favorite recipes, as well as some more pictures.  Hopefully I will be more active in posting. 

BLESSINGS

GRIM ACADEMY AND HURRICANE DORIAN

Rebecca has decided to home school the kids. They are using the kitchen table for some of their work and an old school desk that we bought Ben when he was a kid to do his homework on.

 I am calling her school Grim Academy - ah ha ha.  I have documented a few of their science projects - a terrarium, a skittles project and one of my favorites - we made a wind sock for Hurricane Dorian when it blew through.

Of course Becca and I poked a little fun at Dorian as well because we enjoyed drinking a Hurricane while waiting for it.

The kids seem to be handling the school work well - Jeremiah, in Scott's words - sometimes works very hard to do very little and gives his mom a bit of trouble with Language Arts.  When it comes to Math and Science however he is a sponge!  We have had several field trips including apple picking and pumpkin picking just for a few.  I will make posts for those soon.

TRAINS TABLE UPDATE

The long awaited post about the TRAINS!!  So Scott has a set of old, I mean REALLY old O Gauge trains that were his fathers when he was a child.  We used to set up a small loop around our Christmas tree when our kids were small, and then just got out of the habit (we kept moving our location for the tree and some of the places the train would not fit.  So the trains have been boxed for years.  One of his dreams has always been to set up a permanent table to run the trains. Now that we have the basement finished his dream is coming true.  He started by buying a piece of ply board  and 2 x 4 boards for the "table", saw horse legs to support it and green paint to paint the grass.

 Once it was painted we set it up on the legs and he proceeded to lay out the track on the board.  Jeremiah and Moriah have been his junior conductors helping with just about every step.

Not to be outdone, I found a train puzzle and had the kids work it with me.  We will be framing it to hang on one of the walls in the basement.

The primary train table is going to be Summertown.  Scott has run a smaller piece of board down the wall of the basement to the corner, where he has set up another smaller table called Falltown (he painted it brown).

For Moriah's birthday we bought a wooden doll house to the scale of the train set and set it up on the Falltown table.

Scott put it on a lazy susan swivel base so she could turn it around and play with it or have the front of the house facing out.  She set up a cow yard with a white picket fence to one side of it and it looks adorable!

We are working the board around the other wall, where he will cut a hole in the wall between the living room and bedroom and we will be setting up Wintertown (I get to decorate this one)  Of course we had  to add a Tardis since we are Doctor Who fans....

I will do an update once we have finalized Wintertown.We have had so much fun with this project, and the grandkids are thoroughly enjoying it!.

GARDEN UPDATE. BLUEBERRIES AND PEACH PICKING

Our garden has been quite productive this year.  We had several Patty pan squash that we stuffed with crab and baked - oh so yummo. 

Our spaghetti squash only produced three squash but they did not go to waste.  We made buttered "noodles" from two and gave the third to our son.  Our tomatoes did better than anything else, not only have we eaten tomatoes just about every day we have canned more than 20 quarts of them, as well as spaghetti sauce with our home grown herbs, garlic and onions. 

First batch of tomatoes and blueberries

Caprese salad is one of our favorites so we have enjoyed many of those.

The kids helping harvest from the garden

Some of the First Fruits of our garden

Caprese Salad

Blueberry danishes

Our blueberry bushes were prolific this year as well.  We have frozen approximately 8 gallon bags of blue berries, made blueberry cobblers, danishes, muffins, pancakes and canned about 10 quarts of them.  We opened up the blueberry picking to all of our neighbors and friends as well as our church family and many took us up on the offer and enjoyed the fruit as well.

We celebrated Jeremiahs birthday by taking him out for breakfast and buying him a water rocket.  He and Scott put it together and we had a maiden flight of it. 

They painted it fluorescent colors so they could shoot it at night and find it when it landed!

Moriah helped us plant sunflower seeds early in the season and they grew over 6 feet tall!  We are using the seeds to add to our wild bird feeders.

We wanted to go peach picking with the kids and found a farm Hanover that has pick your own.  We went on a Saturday morning and picked couple of bags full as well as buying a big box what they call "seconds" (apparently they are the peaches that were not good enough for them to sell commercially but the were wonderful!).  From that we canned 8 quarts of peaches - we are making great use of our storage shelves with all of this canning!

The next post will be about the train table that we have been putting together for the basement.  It has been an ongoing project since June so we've made quite a bit of progress.  Blessings!