Dinner tonight

Candied green beans, fried turnips and smothered pork loin.

My friend Tammy at Flat Creek Farm was telling me how to fry turnips. Today on PBS I saw the Lidia's Italy show. She had a guest cook from Arkansas cooking with her. They made skillet fried turnips.

Here's the recipe the best I could copy.

Saute about 4 slices of diced bacon until crisp.

Add 1 clove of garlic and 1/2 of an onion, chopped.

Add 5 to 6 medium diced turnips and 1 diced potato.

Continue to fry for 5 to 10 minutes.

In a small bowl mix 2 teaspoons sugar, 2 Tablespoons water and 2 Tablespoons cider vinegar.

Add to skillet to de-glaze.

Cover and simmer for about 10 minutes.

These were really good!

As for the candied green beans, here is what I did. The recipe is my own version.

Dice 3 slices of bacon and fry until crisp.

In a casserole dish add 1 can partially drained green beans.

Pour the bacon and some of the fat over the beans.

Add about 1/2 cup brown sugar.

Mix and bake 1 hour at 350.

Okay so we had a little pork fat for dinner. But gosh was it good!

After dinner, it was time to make the turnip kraut. We filled a 6 gallon and a 3 gallon crock. It will take about 2 weeks to sour before it can be canned.

Okay I know this blog originally started as a quilting blog, and believe me it will return to that. However, sometime food gets in the way.

I did some sewing today. I'm still working on two small quilts. My printer is out of ink, and I need that to make some paper piece patterns. Hopefully the snail mail tomorrow will deliver the cartridges I ordered.

The weather was beautiful. I washed some windows in between sewing.

Time to rest now.

Canned fish

Here is the finished product.

It was easy to do. Pack the chunks of fish tightly into jars. Add 1 Tablespoon of salt and 1 Tablespoon of oil and seal the jars. Place in pressure cooker, adding 2 quarts of boiling water. Process for 90 minutes at 15 pounds of pressure.

This can be used the same way you would use canned salmon or mackerel.

Bringing home the bacon

Okay so it was really "Bringing home the fish".

BT and Jeremy, along with 2 of the son's friends and one little guy went gigging tonight. First of all it was windy and a full moon was showing. These are two things not good when it comes to gigging.

They were on the river by 6:15. By 8:30 BT was calling from the barn for bowls, buckets and a filet knife. I thought surely he was joking, conditions were not good, and they were home in less than 2 hours.

Boy was I wrong. They had an over flowing tub full. This tub was equal to almost 2 wash tubs full.



Here is Jimmy, who I nicknamed the Iron Chef. He was using a big meat cleaver to cut up trapping bait. Not all the fish gigged tonight was for human consumption. These guys are serious trappers. Their goal was to get fish to bait their traps when season opens.

However BT's goal was to get fish for dinner . . . for the freezer.


Little 3 year old Matthew was in love with this fish. In fact, when it was cleaned he cried and cried, so much that he made himself sick. Poor little guy. Jeremy had even cut the rocks out of the drum fish for him. I gave him apple juice and halloween candy. Nothing doing, he was going to cry.





This is the biggest part of the catch.

10:32PM 54 degrees

The end of the season

Today the weather was gorgeous. It did not rain! That in itself is great. (October had 22 days of rain, totaling over 12.33 inches)The temperatures were in the low 60's most all day.

Today was bittersweet, because boating season has come to an end. Soon the snow will fly and that is not the time to go boating on the Osage River.

So BT and I took the boat about a half mile from the house to the public boat ramp. It was the site for the St Thomas Ferry prior to 1964.

The boat was backed just barely into the water and turned on. After the engine warmed up a product called stabil was mixed into the gas. This prevents problems from the gas sitting over the winter.



While I was waiting for the winterizing to be finished, I spied bittersweet in the trees. BT and I went to survey the vine. We quickly realized it was way to high in the tree for us to collect.






The rest of the day was spent around the house. I washed a couple of loads of clothes. We played with 2 of the grand kids. The third one was deer hunting, youth season opened this weekend. One jeep was washed.

About 2 o'clock, BT grilled some deork burgers. In case you don't know what that is, it's ground deer and ground pork mixed together. It beats beef hamburgers anytime.

About 5, just as we were ready to retire to the recliners, the neighbor called. He had turnips ready for us to dig. After all it's about time to make the turnip kraut again.

And how do you clean a bushel of muddy turnips? Why the power washer of course!

Time to crash now, this time change has us exhausted.

9:51 PM 59 degrees

Halloween 2009

If you will remember yesterday was Jeremy's birthday and we were to take care of the kids.

Such a hard job, first you feed them, then you spoil them, and then they fall asleep.

















Well that is except for Brady. He will play computer games forever. Here he was playing PBSkids.org








Family photo for Halloween 2009. Elizabeth was very content in her flower pot. Alex is a skeleton, Brady is a prize fighter.










Then Elizabeth got changed into her sleeper. Hair bow and all!


HAPPY HALLOWEEN

32 years ago today . . .

. . . I gave birth to my first born. Jeremy came into this world at 8 pounds even.

We had been married over seven years. A whole new game was on for us now.

He has always bought us joy. (Well almost son!) Just kidding, he is a great son, husband and father.






So whether you're sleeping with that cute little daughter. . .








. . . canoeing with your oldest. . .






or teaching the boys the ways of survival . .








Have a Happy 32nd birthday.


We love you Jeremy!


P.S. We get to baby sit tonight while he goes out with friends to celebrate. It's a win-win situation.

Back to normal

I've been out of the ordinary lately. Had the yearly doctor appointment two weeks ago, the boob squeeze last week. Since I am older it was another test today. I won't go into details, but it involved drinking a lot of yucky liquid.

Last night while reading my nightly blogs, my friend Zoey, who I won't link up to this was also having the same test today.

The only good thing about today, (besides the good looking doctor) was a trip after the procedure to LaBamba!

Thanks to my hubby, who gave me moral support by calling me from work to make sure I was drinking my yuck. He was also was my chauffeur who then took me out to lunch.

The next time I will need this test will be 10 years. Medicare can pay for it then!!!!

My test all came out with good results. Hope yours did too Zoey.