Food! I like to make it, I like to eat it!

First off, I truly apologize for not posting again sooner. Sometimes time just gets away from me and it's hard to believe more than a week has passed since my last blog. So please forgive and I promise to be more faithful. Now on to just about my favorite subject: FOOD!!

One of the neat things about living here is all the good stuff there is to eat. Below is a picture of some pies I made with apples from our trees. I forgot how much they cook down and these look a little skimpy to me! I'll make sure to mound them more next time. I have to confess, that while I make most things pretty well, I am NOT good at pie crust, but I am too cheap to buy pre-made crust. The best recipe I have I got from my sister-in-law Lisa but I still think I overwork it or something.


Of course we had to put ice cream on the apple pie. We prefer crumb topping (see previous comment about my poor crust making abilities!) and that crunch goes so nicely with the soft, warm apples and the cold vanilla ice cream. I'll put my two cents here in for Tillamook Vanilla Bean ice cream. It's the best, and pretty expensive in most stores, but my local WinCo has it for about $3.50 which is a miracle. One last thing...notice in the background the blue KitchenAid mixer? This is one of the very few kitchen things I would never want to live without (on this list is also my cast iron skillet and my good knives). I actually named it Julia, for Julia Child, and it gets quite a bit of use as I cook almost everything from scratch and I wouldn't want to be without it!


One thing I make often, both because we love it AND it's cheap, is chicken and dumpling soup. I try to get several meals out of a whole body chicken, so after I cut the good parts off for other things, I boil the carcass then take it out of the water and remove all the meat. You'd be surprised how much you actually get. When the carcass is out of the water, I add celery, onion, carrots, potatoes, some garlic powder, some parsley and of course salt and pepper. When everything is all cooked, I make home-made drop dumplings. YUM!! I have recently found a great recipe for home made egg noodles which are really good too, and while I like to use them in other kinds of soup, I stick with the dumplings for chicken soup. I guess it's a tradition.


Recently I was on the coast and picked up one of our favorite things that, in our opinion, is only best when absolutely fresh from the farmer, and that's OYSTERS. They are something we came to appreciate only recently, but we really love them. They are great left in the shell and put on the grill, then dipped in garlic butter, but in the cooler season we buy them already shucked and pan fry them. I make a mixture of 1/2 flour and 1/2 cornmeal, then season it with some Old Bay Seasoning and some other things then dredge the oysters, making sure to let them sit for at least an hour. This makes the breading stick during cooking. This is a trick the oysterman told us when we were first buying oysters in Oysterville, WA. This is a real place, I promise! So here's a picture of the cooking oysters and the ones that are done resting on the newspaper getting rid of some of the excess fat. We eat these with a squirt of lemon juice and dipped in coctail sauce. YUM!!


I know this picture doesn't have anything to do with this topic, but it just cracks me up. It totally captures Daisy's goofy personality. She is such a good girl and entertaining, too. She's got us laughing all the time. We're coming up on the time when we start bringing everyone into the barn each night, but not quite yet since it's still fairly warm and not raining...but she is certain we are neglecting her and lets us hear about it! Who is in charge here, anyway? Some days I really wonder.