2020 Garden: Final Sweet Potato Harvest!

 Yesterday I went out to harvest the "big" sweet potato bed.  It was kind of fun.  I yanked up all the vines and moved them to the place where we had the zucchini plants this year.  In the spring I will add dirt to that pile which I hope will have composted away over the winter months.

Here is the five gallon bucket of potatoes as I brought them up to the garage.

This view of potatoes are on the trunk of the car.  You can see how huge they are. I am betting that the one on the far right is five pounds and the one next to it close to five pounds. So amazing at their size. 

I cannot wait for them to cure so we can eat them.

Test Knit Finished: Hearth Hat

 Test knitting is an enjoyable past-time usually.  This is a test knit I wanted to do because I saw the test knit for this pattern in fingerless gloves. I LOVED those gloves, so when the hat pattern was available to assist the designer by test knitting it as a hat, I jumped at the chance.

This is a toddler sized hat knit in Patons Classic Wool worsted on 3.5 mm ChiaoGoo needles.  ChiaoGoo needles have become my favorite needles.

The talented designer is Victoria Marchant Knits.  We should look forward to other designs she creates!

Munchie Monday: Failed Pancakes If You Can Believe It!!

 Dear One loves fat fluffy pancakes.  We went to Costco one day last week.  He saw Kodiak Pancake and Waffle Mix on the shelf, remembered our missionary days, and thought it would be a great idea to get it.  Okay, we got it.

Here you see it was Kodiak Cakes not Kodiak Pancake and Waffle Mix, but I bet you grasped what I was talking about....

This morning I made up the pancakes after he returned from his bike ride.  He had eaten a toasted English muffin before his ride so I was not rushing around to make breakfast.  Instead I was working on Christmas knitting, which is coming right along, by the way!

When I pulled out the Kodiak box I noted it called for 1 cup of mix and 1 cup of milk of any kind.  Or maybe it said water.  Be that as it may,  we had nearly half a gallon of buttermilk in the refrigerator from something I made a couple of weeks ago.  Dear One is the one who purchased a half gallon of buttermilk.  We buy it by the pint in Vermont. It appears that people in the South like their buttermilk!!

So I put 1 cup mix in a bowl with 1 cup buttermilk and stirred it up in great shape.  It was quite thick.  Surprisingly.

Here was the first pancake cooking in our non-stick pan.  It just sat there. Very sludgy looking.  Eventually I flipped it over.  I had a good idea that it was not cooked all the way through.  A little later, after cooking three more like this, I started pulling them apart.  They just slid apart as easy as pie. The center was DEFINITELY not cooked.  

At this point I stopped cooking from the bowl and started pulling apart the raw-in-the-middle pancakes and flipped them raw side down into the pan.  They cooked up pretty well.  At least I thought they were okay.

Now for the final bad idea...I added about a half cup of water to the batter in the bowl, stirred it a little bit and cooked two more pancakes. It looked more or less like "real" pancake batter.

Here it is in the pan and looking a little more like a real pancake.  I thought all would be well.  Since it had enough popped bubbles in the top, I decided to flip it.

Here you see the great flipping job!  The pancake pleated on the pan.  Nice!

As it happened, Dear One was not enamored of these pancakes  for some reason so I had to eat some or throw them out. I hate wasting food so you guessed it, I ate three of the nasty things.

Next time---no buttermilk!  In fact, next time I think I will make muffins instead!

Family Friday Tales: The Tale of the Birthday Party

 Our father was a great story-teller.  We loved his stories.  He saw things around him and turned them into lessons for "us kids" and often made us laugh.  Today's story made us laugh.

This is the story:  there was a man in the neighborhood when our father was a boy.  This man was apparently fairly popular.  When he arrived at a pretty good age, there was a large birthday party planned for him.  If I remember right, the party was held in the church hall so it could accommodate all the people who wanted to attend and congratulate the gentleman at arriving at that age.  I don't remember what it was but it strikes me that he was 70 years old.

Someone made a wonderful huge cake for him, which I believe was cooked in a large dishpan.  By saying that you know this story took place many years ago.  I don't know of anyone in this day and age who has a metal dishpan capable of being used in the oven to bake a cake...the dishpans we use are all plastic.

Anyway, it came time for the presentation of the cake with all its candles.  Someone, or maybe more than one person, put a match to all the candles.  The gentleman inhaled a huge breath then blew with all his might to blow out all those candles with one breath.  At the end of his "blow" his false teeth landed right in the middle of the cake.

This was a story our father told us with much mirth and appreciation for the funny things that can happen to a person.  I think that story is one of the reasons that I try to take pretty good care of my teeth...!

Halloween at Our House

 Dear One is such a good man. He thought we should dress up for Halloween for while we sat on our porch ready to hand out candy to passers-by.

Here he is:

Can you guess his costume?  Yes, you are right!  He is the conductor on The Polar Express.

Yep!  There she is: the witch!  One little child on the sidewalk was heard to say, "Look at the cool witch!"  That made my day!  As you can see by the basket of roving, I was sitting there spinning wool yarn while the kids came and went.  I managed to finish one bobbin which was half full when I started. Since people were still coming when it was getting dark, I put on another bobbin and spun up another bit. It is now ready to roll the next day I go out to spin,  

My plan to spin every day after supper has hit the skids.  I think I was only able to spin two days last week, including Halloween!  Maybe I can do better this week.  Too many things pulling me this way and that, but I REALLY want to spin up all the fiber in the fiber closet.  This is especially desirable since I moved ALL the fiber things, including most of the fabric, into the closet when I was on a cleaning binge last week. I need another week of all-day-cleaning-binges to get that workroom whipped into shape. I am thinking of giving away some of my precious 'stuff'.  We shall see.  If I am not using it and there is way too much anyway, well, someone else could benefit from it...At least I guess they could.

Fall Decorations...

 Years ago our tiny granddaughter, G, was visiting our home near a major holiday.  She said, "Grammie, you should decorate your home."  That had never crossed my mind.  We had a holiday meal.  The house was more or less orderly depending on when you checked. Everyone seemed in good order.  SO...I did not see the need.  Since then I have done some small amount of decorating.

The nice Children's Librarian at our county library has a Saturday "Crafternoon", or she did in happier days.  A few weeks ago she inquired of former attendees if we would like to receive a bag with crafty things in it to work on at home. I was all it.

This is what she sent: ten strips of paper for each size, two brads for each size, a green pipe cleaner and a green leaf for each size.  Also instructions!  We were supposed to get a tea light to put inside.  Being lazy and cheap, instead of a tea light I put in a cereal bowl in the big pumpkin and a dessert dish in the small pumpkin and filled them with candy.  You can see that has been a popular idea!

Munchie Monday: Superfood Green "Juice"

 When we were on our mission in Oregon one of the sisters in the mission office told me of a beverage she used for her breakfast every day.  It was made up of several items.  Two of these items were packets of Amazing Grass Green Superfood and Emergen-C.  Both were available at Costco, so we purchased quite a few. (One of them was scheduled to go off their shelves so we did stock up! 

As it happens, I only used it a few times before we completed our mission and came home.  I sent the packets home in our many (MANY) boxes to catch up with us when we finally settled somewhere.  

Because it was so long since I had made "the real thing" with all the ingredients the sister used, I have forgotten all those other ingredients so I just use one pint of filtered water, 1 green superfood packet and one Emergen-C packet.  I blend in the blender with a few ice cubes.  Every time I decide I needed more ice cubes!  

This stuff does not taste amazing but it really does taste okay.  Especially when cold!  I have learned that it is better to make this in a blender than in a shaker bottle!  Trust me.

Don't ask me what you are seeing in background.  I have no idea...except for the butter dish which should really be washed and put away since butter is not really on our diet at the moment.  Too tempting.  How I love butter!