Mountain Musings

The Simple Woman's Daybook

For Today, Thursday, April 18

Outside my window... there's a storm a'brewing. We can always see the black storm clouds headed our way from the Alleghenies over to the west. Today's temps are mid-70s and breezy.

I am thinking... about the garden and flower beds--so much work needs doing this spring, and I haven't drummed up the get-up-and-do-it attitude to get started!

I am thankful... for our five acres the Lord has given us at the top of this hill. I love where we live!

In the kitchen... today is bartering day so Hannah just baked rolls and loaves to exchange for fresh farm eggs.

I am wearing... black skirt, black tank, bright pink blouse...with Crocs.

I am creating... nothing at the moment. But now that the beehives are out of the living room, the sewing machine can be set up in there so I can start on the Saturday Sampler block.

I am going... with Granny to the radiology department of the local hospital tomorrow for another nuclear bone scan. She's still in much pain from the fractured vertebrae when she fell back in February at my sister's house. She then re-injured her back two weeks ago, so the spine specialist wants more x-rays and is considering surgery. Please pray for her healing.

I am wondering... how the girls will do at Farmers' Market on Saturday. It's Earth Day which brings more folks downtown. Fridays are Sarah's all-day baking days...the delicious aromas are wonderful, but the kitchen is totally off limits for anything else!

I am reading... a stack of my hometown newspapers dated from January through March. Do you like reading old news?  I like catching up on hometown news just in case it's about someone I went to school with, and Granny saved these for me when she was in SC.

I am hoping... to put up some new wind chimes this weekend along with my dinner bell that fell over last summer in the big windstorm and all the summer garden flags. Maybe those accomplishments will encourage me to get started on the flower beds.

I am looking forward to... Granny being up and about again, making baskets, and able to go with me to quilt class.

Around the house this week ... Jonathan installed 10,000 bees and their queen safely in their new hive; Hannah tried a new dessert--ice cream brulee--with the raw cow's milk she's now using; I'm waiting for a low-wind day to burn the garden pile of debris; Tom's still working on varnishing more parts of the queen-bed he's building; and Sarah's been taking care of her aging Pepper who's now wearing doggy diapers. :( 

A picture I'm sharing...Hannah's in the garden shed making notes of which tags we'll need for baskets at the show. Come meet us in Dayton, Virginia, next Saturday, April 27, for the Dayton Redbud Arts & Crafts Spring Festival--not sure Granny will be with us; however, Hannah will be selling her soaps, and I'll try my best to sell some baskets!You can find more Daybook entries here.

~Deb

A Week of Recipes

Last week I was assigned to make all our evening meals, like Sarah did for our family last month. I enjoyed planning out the menus and included many new recipes to try. It was a task to come up with foods that the whole family would enjoy, especially since most everything sounds good to me, but I think it was mostly successful.

I mentioned before the week started that there would be at least 3 different nationalities represented in my cooking, so everyone was curious to see how the week unfolded. Each morning I would post the menu on the refrigerator, so that everyone would know what to (hopefully) look forward to, rather than it being a complete surprise.

Monday's Menu:

• Jamaican Jerk Burgers 
• Mango Pineapple Salsa
• Grilled Carrots
• Butterscotch Pie

The first day of the week was going to have the warmest temperatures, so I chose that night to grill outside.The burgers were spicy, basted with this sauce, and to stick with the Caribbean theme I made a cool pineapple/mango salsa to top them. While the hamburgers were grilling, a foil packet of carrots were also easily roasted alongside.  

Tuesday's Menu:

• Kung Pao Chicken over Rice
• Roasted Veggies
• White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies (delegated to Sarah)

This was a fun and relatively quick meal to prepare. In years past some of us have enjoyed ordering Kung Pao chicken at restaurants, so I decided to create it at home. An authentic ingredient missing from my version was Sichuan peppercorns, but the substitution of red curry paste gave it some heat. Roasted red peppers and broccoli went well with this Chinese dish. 

I made this recipe for lunch midweek, using the last of the butternut squash from our 2012 garden, and Wednesday night we had various leftovers.

Thursday's Menu:

• Gnocchi with Prosciutto Sauce 
• Italian Garden Salad
• Breadsticks
• Chocolate Mousse

Italian night! Gnocchi are homemade dumplings/pasta, many times made with potatoes, although the beginner recipe I followed called for ricotta cheese. It was fun and easy to do, as pasta-making goes. I ended up making enough for about 15 servings, so we have been enjoying it for additional meals, too. The tomato sauce for this main dish (similar to this) was inspired by some of my grampa's favorite recipes that he wrote out for me long ago. Prosciutto, Italian cured ham, was stirred into the seasoned sauce. 

The special dessert was somewhat of a Pinterest fail....it didn't look quite as cute as the original. I put aside the star tip and spooned the creamy chocolate mixture into bowls. It still tasted good.

Friday's Menu:

• Meatloaf Cupcakes
• Green Beans
• Cheddar Biscuits
• Applesauce

When your main dish is a "cupcake" (sprinkles included), you have a complete meal! The meat took a shorter time to cook than if I had baked it as a typical loaf. It was topped with mashed potatos and broiled. 

Saturday's Dessert:

• Fruit Platter with Cookie Dough Dip

Sunday's Menu:

• Spicy Chicken Lentil Soup
• Irish Soda Bread

I put the ingredients in the crockpot to cook most of the day, and it was close to being ready when we got home from church that afternoon. Traditional Irish soda bread has just 4 ingredients, and we ate the crusty loaf with our soup, it being St. Patrick's Day. Sarah wanted to make a green dessert, so later that evening we sipped on Coconut Lime Floats. 

And that wrapped up my one week of cooking. Granted, if I were normally cooking every day, I would have included some simpler stand-by meals, but I wanted to pack in as many new recipes to experiment with as I could into this special week. There are a few more I want to try...maybe once Granny returns and can join us!

~Hannah

A Week of Meals

Last week, as I mentioned previously, was my turn to be in charge of the supper every night. It was a lot of fun to plan everything out and choose mostly brand new dishes, all kept a total secret from the rest of the family. Of course, that meant it took a bit more time to get it all made since they weren't familiar favorites, but it was worth it! For one week, at least. :)

I started out on Monday with barbecue ribs. Jonathan will often order ribs at restaurants, but it's a type of meat dish we have NEVER attempted before. I read up on so many different opinions of how to prepare them and ended up combining several ideas/recipes. First, I used this rub recipe to, guess what...rub on the full rack of pork spareribs! Then I baked them for about 4 hours on 250 in the oven, covered tightly with foil. For a sauce, I used a recipe from Taste of Home, and it was bubbling away on the stove while the meat baked.

I got the grill all fired up closer to meal time, then somehow had to singlehandedly wrangle this big, now extremely-tender-and-falling-apart hunk of meat onto the grates in one piece. (Remember, all this was supposed to be a surprise until eating time, so having assistance was off-limits.) Some of the bones themselves detached at this point, however I just saved them aside and pushed them back in place on the final platter. Heh.

Half of the BBQ sauce I saved for dipping, and the other half I brushed onto the ribs as they grilled. I actually was able to flip the ribs a couple of times, basting with sauce each time. After about 15-20 minutes, I decided it was good enough. This time, I needed Hannah to come out and help lift the rack onto a new pan. We ate them along with coleslaw, corn, toasted bread, and cheesecake handily thawed from the freezer. Yay! I think everyone liked this meal well enough, and Jonathan was quite pleased. ;)

Tuesday night was a Mexican meal. The main dish was Enchilada Casserole, with side dishes of Spanish Rice, chips, guacamole, salsa, and some leftover coleslaw. Have you ever tried dipping tortilla chips in coleslaw? It's really good - a local Mexican restaurant introduced us to that.

The main casserole took a little extra time, since you have to fry the corn tortillas first. It did help them not get extremely mushy when layered in the casserole, though. The rice wasn't our favorite. We have a great recipe for Mexican rice from the Sue Gregg cookbook, but I wanted to try something different and perhaps taste more like what you get in the restaurants. We'll stick with the other recipe for now, I think. Oh, and we had Brown Sugar Blondies for dessert. :)

The third day, Wednesday, was leftover day! I planned that because I knew I would be in the kitchen all day decorating the cake. We were actually a tad skimpy on the leftovers, but we pulled enough out of the fridge to make it work.

On to Valentine's Day! Recently at the library, there was a 2012 Southern Living cookbook in the new book section that I promptly checked out. I found some good recipes for Thursday's and Friday's meals in there.

The main dish was Roast Herb Chicken with Sweet Potatoes and Apples. The only substitution I made was I used a lime instead of a lemon, just because that's what we had. The chicken was the one that I bartered brownies for! (Yes, I admit I played with this raw chicken while preparing it, waving the wings around...doesn't it look sort of cute just sitting there?)

Thursday is Hannah's bread baking day, so we had fresh soft rolls to go with it. I made a salad, with red pepper and sliced strawberries included to add some red color. There was also a special drink, Strawberry Limeade. The recipe says to strain out the strawberry solids, but it was taking way too long, and it seemed like it would be just fine to leave it in. So I did. :) I thought it was a bit sweet and not limey enough when tasting it before supper, so I juiced 3 more limes. (We bought a large bag from Costco, so we had limes galore!)

I set the table with the white plates and found some red napkins to use. At the last minute, the idea struck me to try to fold the napkins to look like hearts. I ran to my handy dandy computer, Googled "heart napkin folds," and found an easy tutorial.

Friday night was not a very popular meal. Years ago, I had chicken-fried steak at a restaurant and remember really liking it. There were a couple of recipes in the Southern Living cookbook for it, and The Pioneer Woman has posted one as well, so I thought I would mix and match a bit and try it. I used cube steak, like PW, and used the breading recipe from Southern Living.

The recipe said to dip the steaks 3 times, but I only did it twice, and there still seemed to be too much breading. This style turned out to basically be the texture and taste of a buttermilk biscuit instead of what I think of as a crispy fried chicken breading. Plus my piece of steak was very tough and chewy.

After standing over the hot pan of frying oil, smelling it all, plus the not-so-appetizing results....I was a little very sick of this meal by the end of it! At least the side dishes of garden green beans, rolls, and onion roasted potatoes were decent enough.

Saturday was my last night to cook, and I made something simple...waffles. I cooked up some bacon and also made a blueberry sauce for a topping. We all loved the sauce! I took no pictures of this meal, so you'll just have to imagine what the waffles looked like. :)

Well, that was a peek into my week! I enjoyed it, but it's good to get back to our normal routine again!

~Sarah

Happy Valentine's Day!!

Look what Sarah's been up to!! This amazing cake is the centerpiece for our special Valentine's dinner this evening. Sarah has truly worked hard all week putting extra-special meals on the table for us.

I'm sure she'll post about the experience once the week is over! Hey...I'm not sure I want the week to be over!

We all wish you a Happy Valentine's Day and wish we could share a piece of this cake with you!

"We love Him because He first loved us." ~ I John 4:19

~ Deb

* table topper courtesy of Darlene over at Quilting Daze.

Our Week At A Glance

Welcome to our week at a glance....where Sarah, Mom, and I will share about some of the activities we have been accomplishing at home.

Mr. Puffenbarger from Southernmost Maple Camp asked me to make a special batch of maple soap, using his maple syrup, to sell at the upcoming Highland Maple Festival in March, so I got right to it! Two additional scents of soap have been poured into my molds this week, ready for spring sales. I also delivered an order of soap to a local gift shop.

Another large project that has been in the works is several matting and framing jobs. A friend asked me to custom frame two rooster art prints for her, so while I have all my materials out, I am also gradually completing 12 cross-stitched pieces that have needed to see the light of day.

These stitched pictures were done by either Sarah, Mom, or me within the last...ahem, 10 years. This winter is a great time for me to dig them out and get them to the point where they can actually hang on the wall. We spent time choosing the right color mats, and I measured and cut out the mats and the necessary foamcore. I will be stretching the fabric around the foamcore to ready it for framing. Right now everything is all spread out on Granny's bed--thanks, Granny! :)

Below is one of the almost finished framed rooster pictures. Jonathan and Dad came to my assistance with the final hanging hardware. I'm so happy these are now ready to deliver!

Mom read about a moisturizing eye cream made with just coconut oil and vitamin E; she mentioned the idea to me, so I whipped some up for her while supper was coming together one night. So simple!

And the meal we were making was Peppery Chicken, which we had prepared ahead of time and frozen back in December. It just needed cooking up on the stovetop, and we served it in lettuce-lined homemade pita pockets, pictured below. I made some extra pitas as my weekly trade in exchange for fresh eggs.

~Hannah

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This week, besides some various cleaning projects, I have been in the middle of menu planning. Hannah and I will each be taking a week to plan, shop, and make all the supper meals. My assignment is next week, so it's been fun coming up with my menu. I always like to keep my meals secret, so I won't go into what I'm planning yet. :)

I can say that I did some bartering as well - I made a big pan of homemade brownies in exchange for a chicken that may just turn up on the supper table. Maybe there will be some posts next week about how everything turns out!

~Sarah

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Oh, my! I turned around and blinked, and a whole week has passed!

It's been a busy week as I've waited for the heat pump repairman! He arrived three different days to change out the motor, and change it out again; but this afternoon we finally have heat upstairs!

I've also been planning my trip to the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival in Hampton--taking place just two weeks from now! Emails have been flying back and forth with friends in Williamsburg trying to set up lunch and dinner get-togethers as I pass through that area the first day.

My friend Chris, who invited me to come, has been planning out our activities while I'm there. After the Quilt Festival, we may take a day to have a Girls' Sew-In or visit some quilt shops? Or both? I think these are going to be some fun play dates, and I can hardly wait!

I've also been at the sewing machine finishing my Saturday Sampler Block of the Month. Since the bed is still in the living room...ahem...I decided to make good use of it and put all eleven blocks inside the bed for a photo:

The pinkish block in the left row, third one down, is the latest block I sewed this week. Our final BOM class is this Saturday...so when I finish the last block, it will go in that empty 12th spot you see. I finished another sewing project also....and I'll post about that later. With Sarah doing all the cooking next week, I'll have plenty of time to put some Valentine letters in the mail!

So that's what we've been doing instead of blogging! What can you check off your list this week?

~Deb

Girotti Test Kitchen

It's official - Hannah and I will be doing the farmers' market again this year! :) The annual market meeting was last week, and we were able to reserve our space. That means we don't have to get up quite so early - last year being our first year, it was first come, first serve.

I have had a list of new products that I would like to try, which means I need to submit recipes and labels to the state before they can be sold. This month has been a great time to start testing numerous recipes! Muffins, brownies, and cookies have all been on the docket, and the family and church friends have been happy to be my taste testers. :) The latest exhibit: Funfetti Cookies!

They're basically just a sugar cookie with sprinkles, but they do look more festive and colorful than a regular sugar cookie, which may draw people's eye. I found the recipe on Tasty Kitchen last year and immediately bookmarked it! Sprinkles make everything better, don't they?

There's still quite a list of yummy sweets just waiting to be tested - anyone want to help me? :)

~Sarah

Busy Birthday Baking!

The Mountain Musings kitchen is a'buzz today with preparations for Hannah's birthday meal tonight.

Her birthday tradition has been requesting a meal which we've never had before--usually the more exotic the better! Last week she researched some recipe sites and came up with her choices.

Here's the kitchen scene as Sarah prepares the sauce for Coconut Chipotle Roasted Chicken a'la Crockpot. I've never bought Thai Kitchen coconut milk in my life--but it certainly looks yummy!She also requested Coconut Lime Rice and/or Coconut Lime Rice Pilaf...so we're putting together a mixture of the two. The kitchen smells very lime-y!

Sarah's already baked the Blueberry Streusel Cheesecake, and it looks delicious! This was also an experiment to see if Blueberry Cheesecake might be a future menu item at the Farmers' Market.I just arranged the chicken in the crockpot with the garlic and onions, and we'll steam some green beans and toast some homemade bread to go with the main meal.

I think Hannah will love her special birthday meal. Happy Birthday, Hannah!

~ Deb

Chicken Tortilla Soup

While Mom, Hannah, and Granny are off manning a basket and soap booth at the Holiday Living Show this weekend, I have been the lone female in charge of the kitchen. Tonight's supper was the first meal I actually made new, and this recipe was a first time experiment. Actually, I'm just going to type up what I really did, because I tweaked the recipe a lot and added my own things to it. :) Once we were home from market and lunch, I threw this in the crockpot to simmer for a few hours.

Chicken Tortilla Soup

4 chicken breasts, chopped in small chunks

Taco seasoning, to taste (2 T. perhaps?)

1 15-oz can black beans, undrained

1 15-oz can corn

2 15-oz can stewed tomatoes or Rotel tomatoes

1 cup salsa

7-oz can chopped green chilies

14.5-oz can tomato sauce

Tortilla chips

Shredded cheese

Rub taco seasoning into raw chicken chunks. Heat a little olive oil in frying pan, and saute chicken until almost done. Combine chicken, beans, corn, tomatoes, salsa, green chilies, and tomato sauce in large crockpot. Cover and cook on high for 3-4 hours or on low for 8. To serve, dip into bowls and top with chips and cheese.

I think we all liked it! Now we just have to wait to see what the absent members of the family think of the leftovers. :)

~Sarah

Roasted Sweet Potato and Quinoa Soup

Recently over on the Tasty Kitchen blog, they posted a recipe for a yummy sounding soup. It was just perfect for the chilly weather lately! It was a hit with the female members of the family, although it wasn't a total favorite of the male members. ;) Let us know if you try it and how you like it!

Roasted Sweet Potato and Quinoa Soup

Prep Time 15 Minutes

Cook Time 50 Minutes

Difficulty Easy

Servings 4

• 1 whole Very Large Sweet Potato
• 3 Tablespoons Olive Oil, Divided
• ½ whole Large Sweet Onion, Diced
• 2 whole Carrots, Diced
• 1 clove Garlic (large), Minced
• 32 ounces, fluid Chicken Or Vegetable Stock
• Sea Salt And Pepper, To Taste
• 1 cup Cooked Quinoa
• 1 Tablespoon Butter
• ½ cups Panko Crumbs
• ⅓ cups Parmesan Cheese, Finely Grated
• Parsley, To Garnish

Preheat oven to 400ºF.

Peel and large dice sweet potato. Place sweet potato on a rimmed baking sheet and drizzle with 2 tablespoons olive oil and sea salt. Roast in the oven for 20 minutes.

In a large pot, heat the remaining tablespoon of oil and saute onion, garlic, and carrot until tender. Add potato to the onion mixture and add the chicken stock. Simmer for 20-30 minutes until all vegetables are completely tender. With a hand blender or standing blender, mix until pureed. Adjust seasoning. Add quinoa and reheat.

For the panko topping, melt the butter in a small fry pan and add the panko and cook until lightly browned. Add the Parmesan and stir to combine.

Top each bowl of soup with the panko crumbs and garnish with the parsley.

~Sarah

Celebrating National Cake Decorating Day

Did you know that today is National Cake Decorating Day? Well, neither did I - until yesterday. I ran across this odd holiday and promptly decided it must be celebrated! What better way than to decorate a cake, right? It's really feeling like fall around here, so I decided to go with the autumnal theme. :) So fun to make!
(click to view bigger)

Top row: 6" carrot cakes and mini cupcakes cooling, coloring sugar red, dipping frosted cupcake tops in sugar, frosting the top of the 6" cake and covering with more sugar.

Bottom row: Mini cupcakes with hole poked in center, making marshmallow fondant, using a mixture of vanilla and brown color to paint the fondant (removing powdered sugar and adding more dimension), using knife to score veins in all the multi-colored fondant leaves.

That was my morning from 7 to 12:30! :) It's early enough in the afternoon that now that you know about this holiday, YOU can go have some fun and decorate a cake. Try it!
~Sarah