Mountain Musings

Recording Session

Here's another Sunday at our House post so you can see what happens following the worship service, fellowship meal, and after the guests have all gone home.

Tonight the kitchen became a recording studio complete with mikes, headphones, speakers, and a digital multi-track recorder.

Sarah takes the lead on Come Thou Fount singing soprano, Hannah alto, and Jonathan bass. Dad eventually joined in the fun singing tenor, and can't-carry-a-tune Mom participated by staying out of the way after she got her pictures!

~Deb

Salsa Recipes

Kathie, at A Sparrow's Home, recently asked about the salsa recipe we have been using for our tomato canning this year. We have two recipes we'd like to share; one is a cooked recipe for canning, and the other uses small amounts of plum/paste tomatoes and served fresh.

These are jars filled with Zesty Salsa. The recipe is in the Ball Blue Book of Preserving, but I also found it online here. I have made this recipe for the past few years, and our family enjoys it. I add cumin and lime juice for flavor and extra acidity.

This is a bowl of the delicious fresh salsa that we also often prepare. The recipe came from a friend, Martha, who makes it weekly for her daughter's restaurant. We have enjoyed making it for a few years now each summer when the Roma tomatoes are ripe.

Fresh Salsa

• 10 plum tomatoes, diced
• 1 large onion diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• juice from one lime
• fresh cilantro--pull leaves off stems to fill about a cup, mince
• salt and pepper to taste

This is a very simple concoction! I tend to whip up half this amount at a time to eat with tortilla chips, which serves about 4-6 people. If you are one of those people who are not fond of cilantro, I have also substituted oregano/Italian seasoning for the cilantro, and apple cider vinegar for the lime juice. Dad loves this Italian version. 

If anyone has any favorite salsa recipes you think I must try, please leave a comment!

~Hannah

Pavlova

 

Recently, we bought a package of 18 kiwis from Costco - and then had to come up with some recipes to use them up. Jonathan had been asking for Pavlova, so it was the perfect time to make it, as it is topped with kiwi slices.

Pavlova is a Australian/New Zealand dessert named after the famous Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova. I first made this meringue "cake" when our family did a homeschool presentation on the country of Australia, and I guess Jonathan has remembered it through the years. :)

The meringue, whipped cream, and kiwi make a nice, airy dessert. The tart fruit is a good contrast to the sweet, marshmallowy meringue. I googled Pavlova to find a recipe, and I think I ended up using this one, though with slightly modified toppings. Here's another one that I was considering, as well.

~Sarah

Flower Girl

Whenever folks ask about the garden, I tell them to ask Hannah as she's our garden girl and does most of the work! I usually take care of the perennials around the perimeter of the garden...yarrow, cone flower, hibiscus, iris, gooseneck, heliopsis, phlox, catmint, black-eyed susan, speedwell, wildblue indigo, daylilies, and such.

Hannah also grows her own bed of cutting flowers...sunflowers, scabiosa, cockscomb, zinnias, and cosmos are a few.

Here she is arranging flowers she has gathered for a centerpiece with some Russian sage, scabiosa, black-eyed susan, and cosmos. My favorite flower arrangments she made recently included sunflowers and stalks of glossy purple hyacinth bean pods--very attractive.

Here's a picture of the hyacinth bean pods on the plant. They are immature now and will need to dry on the vine to be harvested for seeds for next year.

I recently read that you can cook these immature shelled beans and eat them as you would snow peas, although we haven't tried that yet! I think this might be one plant we keep just for decoration--both outside and in our flower vases!

~Deb

Bloomin' Tuesday ~ Hyacinth Bean

Here ~ These hyacinth bean plants came up on their own from last year's fallen seeds, and they're growing up and around a pole that holds three bird feeders in our backyard. Unfortunately, as a result, no birds end up coming to feed here, although hummingbirds fly around the purple flowers. They're quite cute to watch. 

Here ~ This hyacinth bean was transplanted from the backyard bird feeder location and finally began climbing the chicken wire and clinging to the antique rake leaning against the garden gate. In the foreground is Russian Sage, and inside the garden you can see some scabiosa.

And here ~ This hyacinth bean was also transplanted to the side of the shed, and it tried hard to fill the trellis, but the deer nibbled it just enough to stunt its growth. It looks rather pitiful! You can also glimpse sedum ready to bloom and the red wave petunias in the shed window boxes to the left.

If you'd like to see more Bloomin' Tuesday posts, check out MsGreenThumb Jean's blog.

~Deb

29!

Flowers ~

Zinnias, Daisies, Sunflowers, Yellow Rose of Texas, and an unknown tiny white flower.  Thanks, Hannah, for the arrangement.

And Chocolate ~

Oreo Cookie Dessert with Sarah's homemade ice cream and red heart sprinkles. Thanks, Sarah, it was yummy!

And my Honey ~

Happy 29th Anniversary to us!

~Deb

It's a Small World After All...

The posts we've written in the past on our home church fellowship have drawn quite a bit of interest. Here's another bird's eye view into what a Sunday is like at our house.

On a recent Lord's Day 37 folks attended our fellowship--quite an answer to prayer from our small beginnings of just two families, totaling 9, two years ago this month. Our usual attendance has been between 25 and 30 on a regular Sunday.

Extra chairs are brought out, and they spill around behind the sofa in anticipation of each family's arrival. 

Fellowshipping with us have been folks from other parts of Virginia, New York, Texas, Michigan, Illinois, and even Nigeria!

We are so blessed to have these families worshipping with us, and we enjoy the agape meal afterwards when we can get better acquainted.

We recently welcomed Kenton and Anna and their three children who are in the area from Chicago. Kenton will be here for a year's legal internship, and we are looking forward to getting to know them more during these next months as they are a part of our church.

Friends of Kenton and Anna who are also from Illinois--George, Krista, and their little girl--are here for a month-long medical rotation at UVA before leaving the area.

If any of you have seen the Eden String Quartet DVD from Franklin Springs Family Media, you might recognize Krista as one of the sisters in the film. We loved getting to meet her because we felt like we knew her already after listening to her family's beautiful music.

Larry, Kathy, and their eight children hail from New York. They visited us recently when they came to Virginia to bring their oldest son to law school at Liberty University in Lynchburg. After getting him settled, they headed back home. We only met them the one Sunday; however, Jeremy has continued to drive the 1 hour, 45 minutes from school to worship with us here.

Ken, Andrea, and their children found out about the church and drove down I-81 almost two hours from northern Virginia to visit recently. We look forward to future visits from this delightful family.

Dan, Jan, and their family moved to Virginia from New York a year ago and have joined us for the past three months for church. We have enjoyed conversations with them and also visiting in their home.

It's been great to have these fellow believers from many walks of life gather here each Sunday. The Lord has truly blessed our small group.

~Deb

Good Ol' Friday

It's quiet around here this afternoon...Barney is on his way back to South Carolina today. We enjoyed the visit with my sister this week and will miss them both being here!

After our outings earlier this week, yesterday we stayed home and did some inside gardening.

Hannah and Bet shelled peas, while Sarah and I frenched a passel of green beans. Then we left the kitchen so Hannah could do all the freezing. The tomatoes are ready to make into salsa, so some canning is ahead also. Isn't it always so yummy and worth the extra effort when you serve garden produce in the winter months? We think so.

Here are some fun thought questions we entertained ourselves with while Bet was here (taken from the Chat Pack, fun questions to spark conversation at dinner parties, on car trips, or for use in the classroom):

"If you could add one month to the calendar year, inserting it between two existing months, where would you put the extra 30 days?"

Most of us picked between April and May with another answer being between September and October.

Here's another: "If you could have any object or place in the world completely to yourself for one day, what would you choose?"

My first thought for a place was The White House, and a couple of others had the same idea, with Buckingham Palace being another good answer. Hannah's choice of an object to have completely to herself for one day? A long-arm quilting machine. I wish I'd thought of that!

Click the picture above to enlarge the Chat Pack case for some other interesting sample questions.

Well, it's good ol' Friday, and the weekend is here. We hope yours is a good one!

~Deb

Stash Giveaway!

Why not head on over to Randi's blog I Have To Say... she's giving away some of her leftover designer fabric pieces! Leave a comment by Sunday afternoon the 16th; she'll draw a name on Monday morning.

Randi's Etsy shop was the first online shop where I purchased fabric, and I'd love to win any of those remnants from fabrics she's selling! Check out her shop for some great fabric choices.

~Deb 

Come Join Us In the Garden

Heard today in the car as we traveled to Andre Viette's Nursery, "I just love going places." That was me! Could you guess who loves day trips? :)

Today's free lecture was all about Attracting Butterflies and Hummingbirds to Your Garden, and I was thrilled that a lecture was planned while my sister is here this week.

Here's Andre himself, such an interesting gentleman with lots of stories of when he first started studying horticulture as a young boy and of all the many gardening trips/tours he organizes each year. We enjoyed hearing him speak.

Everywhere you look on the Viettes' property you'll see beautiful flowers. Here's a field of one of his newest varieties of daylilies, which he told us blooms through the summer and fall.

Andre cut some purple passion plant for everyone in our lecture group. We have some work ahead of us tonight getting our plants in some dirt so they will develop roots. Hopefully, my sister's cuttings will survive in a pot until she plants it in some South Carolina soil this weekend.

We also came away with some Solomon's Seal. The Viettes are very generous with their plants and invite visitors to stroll their gardens anytime. We always enjoy going to Viette's and had a wonderful time in the garden today.

~Deb