Thanksgiving Report

Did you all have a nice Thanksgiving?  We did... with three straight days of visiting with family and eating yummy food at Scott's parents' house.  Scott's parents have recently built a party room over their over-sized two car garage to accommodate such affair.  There were at least 30 people at any given time, and we counted 44 the last day when Scott's aunts, uncle and some cousins joined in.  

On Thursday, Scott smoked a turkey on his grill after braising it over night.  It was the best turkey he has cooked.  Tender and juicy meat with great flavor.  I made pumpkin pies and yam/apple casserole.  Saturday was pie day.  Tamsin headed the party by baking the most pies.  The rest of us brought a few each.  We counted 18 pies including the quiche I made.  My favorites were Scott's mom's pecan pie and Tamsin's lemon sour cream pie.  

         

Quinn got a new toy for his birthday... 

which replaced this.  

Kai and I baked 30 loaves of bread today in three batches.  We are hoping they will get us through December.  

Kai operated Magic Mill, the wheat grinder, and the 10 qt. mixer Scott's dad made for us.  

Note his cool t-shirt from the reunion:)

Quinn's new favorite in the kitchen.  

Food

I lived in Pittsburgh before San Diego.  My church friends there just made an online recipe book.  I am having so much fun as I find names of some of my favorite people, and their yummy dishes.  It brings back many great memories.  My favorites are memories of Kai's birth and having a precious newborn at home.  I had lost a lot of blood from the c-section and was having a harder time bouncing back.  Nursing wasn't going very well yet.  My friends took turns and brought dinner every other day for two weeks.  I looked forward to the home cooked meals and the nice visit.  My mom enjoyed trying new food and she really liked the extra time she got to enjoy the baby.  Everything was delicious.  My friends were great cooks.  And now I have all the recipes.  Try Kelly's enchiladas.  I just made it again yesterday.  So good.        

    

Canning Tomatoes

Scott's parents are in England for two weeks, and while they are gone, they are letting us harvest their amazing garden.  We have been eating fresh tomatoes, zucchinis, and back berries everyday.   

Today I put myself through a refresher course on canning, and bottled 14 quarts of tomatoes.  It was a lot of work and I was no good afterwards because I was just so tired.  I am wondering how I bottled 50 quarts of peaches and pears that one year when I was 8 months pregnant with Asha.  Jerome was two.  Am I just old now?  

 

Kai fell asleep, again.  We called for dinner and he didn't show up.  

Strawberry Freezer Jam

The strawberries are in season.  Some of my friends have taken their children to a you-pick farm in Carlsbad, but I haven't had the courage to pull it off.  Instead, Scott and I take our children to the farmer's market on Saturdays.  The strawberries are so sweet and full of flavor that we finish a flat before we get home.  

Adrianne and I had another project day today.  You guessed it.  We made strawberry freezer jam.  LOTS and LOTS of it.  We bought six 4 pound cases of strawberries from Costco, which made 36 cups of crushed strawberries.  Adrianne used Certo Premium Liquid Fruit Pectin, which called for 1/2 cup water, 1 pouch pectin, 4 cups sugar, 2 Tbs. lemon juice, and 2 cups crushed strawberries.  She made 8 batches.  Asha and Kai like to eat their freezer jam in a bowl with a spoon, so I tried the low sugar recipe for us.  I used 1 box of Ball No Sugar Needed Fruit Pectin with 1 cup of water, 3 cups of sugar, 2 Tbs. of lemon juice, and 4 cups of crushed strawberries.  I made 5 batches and ended up with 10 quarts.  We under estimated how much jam we would end up with and ran out of containers.  We emptied out my container cupboard, and even used a zip-top bag to finish the last batch.  

Adrianne made an amazing baguette bread from scratch with my new red cast iron pot.  Oh, it was beautiful and authentic.  There is nothing like a baguette fresh from the oven for dinner.  I could have eaten the whole loaf.  Wow.

Some fabric love.  I have some projects longing to come to life, if only I could get on with the cutting, not my favorite part of sewing.

Finally, a picture of our great babies that smile and coo as long as they are fed.  The older ones enjoyed water play in the back yard.     

        

Lots of Campbell Bread

Last week I finally gave into Asha's persistent request for Campbell bread, the bread Scott grew up with.  It used to be our staple, but since we have Costco 10 minutes away where you can get two huge loaves of wheat bread for $3.50, we had gotten out of the habit of baking it.  I found our 10 quart mixer on the storage shelf in the the garage.  Scott and his Dad made it for me back when we lived in Pullman.  It is funny that getting the heavy mixer into the kitchen is the only hard part of this whole thing, and the rest is just fun.  We had 10 beautiful loaves in no time, and made ten more while we were at it.  The aroma in the house and the taste of hot bread with honey butter was heavenly.  We will see how long the 18 loaves in the freezer will last since that is all the kids have been wanting to eat.    

Here is Kai in the shorts.  I made them in size 100 which is about how tall he is, but I am afraid that they are too big.  I am happy to keep the length so he can wear them into fall, but I am going to have to adjust the width when I sew the other ones.