Autumn Drinks

Autumn starts tomorrow!  Yay! It is slowly starting to feel fallish here.  The days are still relatively warm (around 80) but the nights are pretty cool and get down to the 50-60 range.  I love waking up in the morning to a cool house and being all snuggled up in blankets.  The whole being cool in the morning means that I'm even more addicted to warm drinks than before.  I think the thing that draws me to coffee and tea is not so much the caffeine, though that helps, but the fact that I love having something warm in my hands to slowly sip on as the morning progresses.  So in honor of fall, I wanted to share to nice warm drinks with you.
The other day I made this PSL and it was the best homemade one I'd ever tasted.  I didn't have the whip cream to go on top but it was so nice that it didn't need it.  The best part is that I got to make it with some leftover butternut squash that I grew in our garden.
The other drink is one that my husband and daughter love: A honey vanilla steamer.  If you've never had a steamer, it is simply steamed milk with some kind of flavor/sweetener.  I don't have an espresso machine so I can't truly steam the milk but it tastes good either completely unfrothed or with my frothing technique down below.  The best part is that it is a relatively healthy drink

Honey Vanilla Steamer
1 C milk
1-2 drops of vanilla
Honey to taste

You also get bonus points if you use raw milk and local raw honey.
Heat the milk on the stove top until quite warm.  Do not boil.  Add in the honey and vanilla.  Stick your immersion blender in it and blend until frothy.  Drink.

This drink is super rich so serve up smaller cups instead of large 16 oz ones.

Since it has been so warm during the day, I haven't made many soups but I'm definitely ready to start having soup every single week.  What are your favorite fall recipes?  Please share for meal planning inspiration.

My Toddler + Big Kid

So my babies aren't quite babies anymore.  Kira just turned 3 this month and Will is a whopping 13 months old.  Here are some things I want to remember about them.

Kira:
- She has a really good memory especially for songs.  She loves music especially her "princess music" which is simply a Disney/musical station on Pandora.  She has memorized all of the princesses' names though she has only ever seen Tangled and Cinderella.

Kira with a little slug friend.

- Did I mention she is in to the princesses right now?  We were tired of her waking up in the night and asking for "mugasik"(music) to be turned on.  She had a little projector/white noise machine with a timer that would play music.  I came up with the brilliant idea of just getting her a night light so that it would stay on night.  I let her pick out whatever she wanted since they were all about the same price and I wanted it be special enough to replace her "mugasik."   She chose the princess one.  We don't have to get up as much at night.  Two birds, one stone.
-She has already memorized the first 57 questions in the children's catechism as well as several passages from Scripture.
-Just this past week or so she started to get interested in writing her name so we've started to work on that.
- Even though she loves princesses, her favorite part of just about any movie are the animals.  While watching Cinderella, she starting freaking out when the horses pull the carriage to the ball.
- She watched her first movie in theatres this past June.  We saw the new Cinderella for $1 each.
- She knows either the sound or the letter name of just about every letter of the alphabet.

Will
- He took his first step a week after his 1st birthday.  He still crawls more than walks but each day he walks a little longer.  He is relatively steady and probably walks about 25% of the time.

Observe the mess.  

- He know quite a few words including some, ow, go outside, come, hi, and bye.
- He understands a lot now such as "time to eat" or "go change your diaper" or "go get a book."
- He loves the outdoors including eating dirt.
- He is kinda the class clown in our house.  He hits his own head and then shouts, "Ow!" and then giggles like crazy.  Sometimes he does it to make us laugh but other times he does it when he hears us laughing about something else.
- He has already mastered going up and down stairs.

Summer Cookin'

I love cooking seasonally.  In the winter I make soups weekly and things like meatloaf and mashed potatoes or a roasted chicken seem to work wonderfully.  In the summer though, I like to keep things simple and fresh, fresh, fresh.  Right now our garden is the biggest and best it has ever been which really isn't saying much.  It took a long time but all of our heirloom tomatoes are getting ripe at the same time and we're currently bringing in 5 cucumbers or so a week.  We also have harvest 3 butternut squashes and have 3 more that are probably just about ripe.  Oh, and did I forget to mention the abundance of fresh herbs?  I love the game of trying not to let any of my fresh produce go to waste.  So far I've made refrigerator pickles, lacto-fermented pickles and frozen tomatoes 3 ways: Diced, salsa, and balsamic roasted.  I'm totally loving things like pasta salad with fresh veggies, stir-fries, and sandwiches.  My current favorite summer sandwich would be the caprese grilled cheese.  All you have to do is make a grilled cheese sandwich with mozzarella, pesto, and fresh tomatoes.  

There is one recipe that I make repeatedly throughout the summer.  Summer cannot end until I've made this at least 10 times.  It is THAT good.  I got this recipe from my friend Wendy.  Give it a try, you won't regret it.  

This picture is slightly deceptive because I ran out of Mozzarella cheese and had to use some colby jack.  It still tasted wonderful.  

Tomato Basil Pie

1 9" unbaked pie crust

1 1/2 C shredded Mozzarella Cheese

Enough ripe tomatoes to slice and pile high (maybe 4-5)

1 C loosely packed basil leaves, crushed OR 1-2 T dried basil

4 cloves of garlic, minced

1/2 Mayo

1/4 C grated parmesan cheese

1/8 t pepper

Prebake the pie crust.  Remove the pie crust from the oven and sprinkle with half of the mozz. cheese.  Allow it to cool for a few minutes on the counter while you slice tomatoes and drain them on paper towels.  Pile the tomatoes high over the cheese.  Combine the remaining ingredients (except the mozz cheese) and spread over the tomatoes.  Sprinkle remaining cheese on top.  Bake at 350 for 40 minutes or til it is brown and bubbly.  Try not to eat the whole thing in one sitting by yourself.  

What about you?  What recipes are you loving this summer?  I'm working on planning out my menus for the next week and would love to hear what I should add to the list!

So Monday...and a Quick Tip

Ok so it is Monday.  We just got back from being at the river with Aaron's family for the past two days.  The trip was a lot of fun but a long weekend + 2 toddlers + being tired out myself + a giant mess covering every surface in our house + having no milk and only 3 eggs left = grumpy Monday.  Fortunately, both kids are taking a nap right now which means that I have a few seconds to pull myself together and prepare for the afternoon. My one bright spot this morning was getting to harvest all the veggies that ripened while we were gone.

This is my happy place.  Of course the grass was all wet and muddy from the rain so my kids were kind a nasty by the time we back inside but I'm still happy.  

See all of the above tomatoes?  That is the ones I've harvested in the past 2 days.  The tomatoes have been unrelenting these past 2 weeks or so and I've loving it.  Of course there are too many too eat right now so I've been trying different methods of preservation.  Which brings me to the second part of my post: My quick tip.  

Whenever life gives you too much of something, just freeze it!  It helps if you have a large chest freezer but you can also squeeze quite a bit into a small refrigerator freezer. For instance, do you have too many tomatoes?  Try cutting them (if they are larger), drizzle them with olive oil, balsamic vinegar and garlic salt and then roast them in the oven at 400 degrees for 1-2 hours.  Pop the into a freezer bag and then pull them out in the winter to add to pizza or pasta.  

Another easy one is bread crumbs.  Whenever you have some bread or even a hamburger bun that is about to go bad, just spread some butter on it and pop it into the oven until it is toasted.  You could also add seasoning at this point such as Italian.  When it is toasted and cooled off, put it into the a food processor until crumbled and throw them into the freezer.  Next time you need bread crumbs, they are ready to go and will never mold as long as they are in the freezer.  Seriously, it is so easy and I love not feeling liking I'm throwing away good food.  

A Dinner Party

A few months ago, it dawned on me that our church had never really done anything to thank our elders and deacons all of whom have been serving our church for many years.  I know that people oftentimes give gifts of appreciation to the pastor and his family but we'd never done anything for our other leaders.  After some thought and discussion with my husband, a plan was hatched.  I decided to do something selfish that would be nice for them but also make me super happy.  My plan was to prepare them a feast and use it as an excuse to make gourmet food and practice plating.  I contacted the best cook in our church and asked for her help and we were off to the races.  It just so happened, that my college roomie was going to be visiting that weekend and she was excited to help.  She was a great asset and definitely helped things go along super smoothly.  We also invited members from church to help donate towards buying each of the couples a gift card to a nice restaurant as we wanted to give everybody a chance to participate.  My parents graciously allowed us to use their home even though their living room was currently under construction.  Here are a few pictures from the evening.

So I designed this menu.  I'm pretty proud of it as I've never designed anything before in my life.  It was an adventure to say the least.  We folded them into the napkin along with the silverware.  I wish I had gotten a picture of the real thing but I didn't. 

Kelsey, my college friend, was elated when I asked her to arrange the flowers.  She's really good at it and enjoys it so it worked out perfectly.  We had 12 people so we had to set quite a large table. When my mom was helping to get it ready, she remarked, "It looks like Downtown Abbey!"  One of the first remarks we got from the guests was that it reminded them of Downtown Abbey as well.  

These were our appetizers: Caprese with a balsamic reduction and bacon ricotta crostini.  I meant to take a picture of the main course but I forgot until all the plates were already set out.  We served a perfectly cooked balsamic pork tenderloin, spinach mushroom risotto and a roasted carrots. 

The woman on the left is my friend Laurel from church.  She's so sweet, southern and makes a killer pork tenderloin.  Seriously.  It was everybody's favorite and they oohed and aahed and said it was better than any restaurants.  

The dessert isn't the prettiest thing ever to look at.  We did strawberry parfaits, a homemade truffle, and a square of baklava.  

The serving quartet.  

I had a blast putting it on and I think that everybody enjoyed themselves.  Our reviews were very good.  Perhaps it is time to consider opening a restaurant.  

My Garden - a Midsummer Update

My garden turned out really pretty this year.  It is nothing spectacular but I enjoy looking at.  It is so peaceful and relaxing.  It is also the largest garden that we've ever grown which isn't saying much.

The main reason it looks so pretty is because I decided to plant butternut squash.  Only one or maybe two plants came up but it is covering 10 feet in every direction.  I hope we can get a lot of squash for this fall.  Our cucumbers (on the trellis) are also doing quite well.  We just picked our first one last weekend and we have one more ready to pick today and probably a couple of more for tomorrow.  We are also growing lima beans.  One piddly watermelon and sad little zucchini plant that I bought on clearance since our squash didn't come up.  The sunflower came up on its own leftover from last year.  We also grew carrots, lettuce and spinach this spring and I hope to replant them this fall. 

These are our crazy tomatoes.  Unfortunately, we have yet to get a ripe one off of these two giant bushes.  We have been getting some small ping ball sized ones off the plants in our front flower gardens.  We also have been harvesting herbs and a little bit of rhubarb this spring.  

We all love eating fresh veggies and watching them grow from little "babies" to big vegetables.  

Our Life in Bad Quality Pictures

Maybe one day I'll decide to be a real blogger and get a good quality camera along with some good quality camera skills.  Or maybe I'll someday be motivated to actually attempt to edit my photographs.  For now though, you're stuck with these.  They may not be beautiful but they do show whats been going on in our life lately.

The kids and I were blessed to get to take a trip with my family to go visit my Grandma.  I haven't seen her for 2 years.  Every time I see her, I just want to soak it all in cause I never know when it will be my last visit.  

We got back from our trip about an hour before dinner.  Since the cupboards were bare, we headed out to get a bite to eat.  Will's favorite part was this giant piece of ice.  He enjoyed licking it and sliding it around with his fingers.  Hopefully, the table was at least kinda clean. 

Ultimate crunchy mama moment - kiddo snacking on a carrot freshly picked from the garden.  I purposely try not to buy crackers and such because if we have them, I can barely convince my children to eat their lunch.  Kira will tell me, "I don't want lunch, I want a snack!"

So it was our anniversary and my sweet husband sent me this giant bouquet.  If only  he'd sent me a maid service to clean up the mess in the background.  ; )  We enjoyed a nice dinner at our town's second fanciest restaurant.  

We don't use bath towels here.  I just throw my kids in the dryer and they come out all nice and toasty.  Just joking, just joking.  Will is really into the dryer right now.  

The other day I realized that I haven't done any crafty projects with Kira for awhile.  We decided that firework artwork would be very appropriate.  While Kira enjoyed the artwork, she is actually terrified of real fireworks.  I don't think they would be so bad if it happened during the day but it is just too emotionally overwhelming right at bed time. 

Aww, my little handyman.  Isn't it nice that we have such helpful children?  

I'm not ready for this child to learn how to open doors.  No, no, no, NO!  He is already dangerous enough without being able to go outside whenever he wants.