Snoctober!

Well.

I took some photos of our beautiful leaves last Thursday night.  The yard and the trees were so beautiful!

And then Friday came.  And so did the snow.  

This was just the beginning.  We ended up with about four inches.  And it's still here!!  I feel like it must be December.  (I have refrained from playing Christmas music, however!) Five days of snow and cold in October.  Tomorrow is supposed to finally be above freezing and then maybe the snow will melt.  

We stayed in and cozied up to the fireplace and I've been knitting away on those brown socks.  Good news!  I should be done tomorrow.  I was able to get away with undoing just the toe of the too-short-sock and I'll be the first to say how amazed I am. I'm just glad it worked!  Time for a new color of yarn!

I'm also getting the Christmas wall hanging quilted, a little at a time.  I finally decided to just stitch in the ditch using my Bernina 830 and a walking foot.  I'm so thankful for a machine with a large throat space and my nice sewing cabinet so that everything is level with room to spread out.  Spoiled, that's what I am.  

Well, that's the latest here at the Resort.  Just trying to stay warm and get a few projects done. I made a yummy ham and pea soup in the Instant Pot this week and that's kept our tummies warm, along with muffins.  I do love winter cooking!  ♥

November!

We've been on the road this month.  After returning from Bruder Bear's, we were home for a while, working on bathrooms (will it ever end?), exercising (me!), and doing fun stuff like the laundry, etc., and then we were on the road again.  Last weekend was spent in Boise and McCall, and then Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of this week we were on the road watching soccer games as our two grandsons' school competed in an end of the season soccer tournament.  They came in second and Cam was chosen one of the six top players in the league.  

As my faithful readers (thank you for sticking with me!) know, I purchased an electric pressure cooker this year. I'm part of a Facebook group for the Instant Pot (the brand I purchased) and they are a busy bunch.  All kinds of pictures pop up each day and they seem to go from topic to topic.  

There's a yogurt function on the Instant Pot and I really never intended to use it, but then pictures began to show up on FB.  Intrigued, I checked a blog site that had been featured and read through the instructions and decided I should give it a try.  Oh.My.Goodness!  Easy? Absolutely.  Delicious? Absolutely. Will I do it again? Yes!

I ended up with six pints of thick, creamy yogurt from a gallon of two percent milk.  It did take all day, but I was only actively involved for less than an hour.  

I found the very nice plastic lids (made by Ball) locally. And I have to tell you, in my current issue of Country Living, they feature a set of very similar looking lids, in a set of six, for about forty-four dollars!!  I bought my box of eight for about four dollars!!  Pretty big price difference.  

The blog site recommended draining the yogurt in something called a nut milk bag, but I just used a large mesh strainer lined with a tea towel and set it over a big stock pot.  Worked quite well.  Here's the cleaned up pieces.  I used my canning funnel to ladle the yogurt into the jars.  

I've been happily eating the yogurt for days now.  I spoon some into a dish, add a drizzle of pure maple syrup, and sprinkle on some home-made granola.  And speaking of granola, here's a link to the recipe.  This stuff is seriously easy to make and totally yummy. 

Fall has finally arrived and it feels good.  Time to cozy down, drink hot coffee and tea, and make plans for the holidays.  I stitched a few leaves to add to our seasonal decor.

Hanging on the china hutch door

Tucked under a candle with embroidered wrap

Happy November!  ♥

Potato Salad

I love me some potato salad. Always have.  I don't make it often because if it's in the frig I have a hard time not grabbing a spoon and having "a little taste." Often. And of course, making potato salad can be labor intensive.  Boiling eggs, cooling said eggs, and then peeling and chopping them.  And then there's the potatoes themselves:  washing, peeling, cutting into chunks, boiling, cooling and then dicing them.  And making the dressing. . .  

I'm still loving my Instant Pot and was thrilled to note a recipe for potato salad on one of my favorite sites, Pressure Cooking Today (link on sidebar).  I checked it out and was amazed to see that the potatoes and eggs are cooked together in the Instant Pot!  Could this possibly work?  I am pleased to report that it does, indeed.  And works in wondrous ways!  I made the potato salad I took to my parents over Mother's Day weekend using the recipe, and I would say it was the best potato salad I've ever made.  

Cooking the potatoes for salad takes careful attention or the potatoes overcook and you end up with mashed potato salad.  Using the Instant Pot and dicing the potatoes before cooking produces perfectly cooked potatoes.  Truly!  And the eggs?  You nested them down in the potatoes and they cook to perfection and better yet, peel to perfection!  It's all like magic!  I made another salad last week and it was just as perfect.  

So, if you have an Instant Pot, or even a stovetop pressure cooker, give this recipe a try.  I'm sorry I have no picture because . . . we ate all the salad!  :-)  But there's one if you go to the recipe.  ♥

Yum!

At the risk of boring my faithful readers, I have to share my latest kitchen triumph.  Yes, triumph! When I received my stovetop pressure cooker some years ago, on the advice of my cyber friend CJ, I purchased Pressure Perfect by Lorna Sass.  I used her book to guide me in my first attempts to use the cooker, and I've continued to rely on it whenever I have a question or need a reliable recipe.  

I was intrigued to note, early on, that she had a dessert section including a recipe for cheesecake. Yup, cheesecake.  I recently tried her rice pudding recipe with great success, but still hesitated to try the cheesecake. (Here is where I probably should mention that never in my life had I actually made a real cheesecake although I love them.)  

Enter my new Instant Pot.  Less stress because it controls everything, so I could concentrate on just making the cheesecake itself.  I was inspired, too, by a recipe on a blog site called Pressure Cooking Today that was a take-off on the Sass recipe and used the electric pressure cooker.  Each time I went to the store, I purchased something I would need to make one: cream cheese, lemons, graham crackers (didn't want to be too hasty in acquiring the ingredients!).  

Last night Dan was at a meeting, so I had the evening to myself.  I had anticipated that I might be brave enough to try, so I took the cream cheese out to warm up before dinner.  After Dan left, I read over the instructions one more time and began.  Truthfully, the hardest part was making the graham cracker crumbs! (Note to self:  buy the box of crumbs next time--can we say crumbs all over the counter?)  

Sass's recipe was straight forward and the only change I made was to add three minutes to the cooking time because electric pc's don't get quite as high a pressure as stovetops do.  And also because we are at an altitude that requires a little additional time.  

The result?  Here it is out of the cooker:

In order to fit in the cooker, a smaller 7" springform pan is needed.  I ordered this one from good ol' Amazon and it's so cute!  The length of foil to the side is for placing under the pan to lower it into and more importantly out of the pot (no burned knuckles!) and is part of Sass's instructions.

I refrigerated the cheese cake overnight after it cooled down and just took it out and removed the sides a little bit ago:

It looks like a real cheesecake!  More importantly, it tastes like one!  In a word:  Yum!  ♥

Ahh, Soup, How I Love You!

Lest you think this is an ode to Campbells, let me assure you that it is not.  It's an ode to homemade soup.  In this case, a little number I concocted using dried beans.  

Is it not gorgeous?  At four o'clock this afternoon, my bag of navy beans was still sealed.  (Have I mentioned lately how much I love my pressure cooker?  Well, I do!) My recipe starts out with some basics from Pressure Perfect by Lorna Sass, and then is customized by moi.  I have appropriated her name for it though:  Pasta E Fagioli. And I have to tell you, as we were eating it tonight, I heard myself say, "It has such depth of flavor." And, "The flavor lingers in the mouth." And then I said, "I don't think I've ever said those phrases before! Hmmm..."  After more than forty-three years of being the head cook, most things I make don't knock my socks off anymore, but this little number will be repeated!  ♥

In the Kitchen

For various reasons, I've been on a kitchen kick lately. I'm taking cookbooks to bed to read before lights out, I'm perusing lots of food blogs, and I'm actually spending quite a bit of time in the kitchen trying new things.  

Last night I tried a new recipe using broccoli and we found it quite tasty--and different.  I had the last of some fresh broccoli in the fridge that needed to be used, and a rundown of the recipe told me I had all the other ingredients.  We were having tacos for supper, so for a brief moment I pondered the addition of something so not Mexican (can tacos really be called Mexican?), but then I threw caution to the wind and went with it.  It was delicious and we ate every last morsel.  So what was it? Roasted Marinated Broccoli and you can find the recipe by clicking here.  

A few weeks ago I made chicken fajitas for supper and decided to make my own refried beans.  I checked my Pressure Perfect cookbook by Lorna Sass and found a recipe for Sub-limey Refried Beans and once again, I actually had all the ingredients.  (I've been more adventuresome at the store, too, and actually had limes in my fruit basket.)  I pressure cooked a pound of pinto beans and followed the recipe.  They were excellent in the fajitas, but then we love lime on them--it makes the flavors sing.  :-)  I froze the leftovers and used them in the tacos last night.  They froze well and the lime flavor was still evident.

Another recipe which met with great approval recently was for Cranberry Pork Loin.  The recipe comes from Judy over at Patchwork Times and is also a pressure cooker recipe.  I served it with a big bowl of homemade mashed potatoes and it was delicious!!  You can find that recipe here.  Judy has lots of good recipes so you might want to click on her Recipe link in the blog header and check out others.  

Right now I have a loaf of San Diego Sunshine Bread working in my bread machine.  It makes the most fabulous French toast, so that's what we'll be having for breakfast in the morning.  Yum!!  I'll use Eggbeaters and almond milk for the dipping mixture, so it'll be a healthy breakfast in spite of the syrup we'll use.  The recipe comes from the original Bread Machine Magic published in 1992 by Linda Rehberg and Lois Conway. It is my go-to bread machine cookbook and I've never been disappointed.  

And last, in kitchen news, a new food processor has come to live with us.  Back about 1980, Dan bought me an inexpensive GE food processor and in spite of it's low pedigree, it's been a trooper.  However, the last few times I used it, I noticed it didn't seal well anymore.  After almost thirty-three years, it was time to replace it.  I did some checking online and I had one picked out, on sale even.  Then yesterday we drove to Costco and lo and behold, there was one on the shelf.  With Dan's encouragement, into the cart it went.  I had fun setting it up and watching the accompanying video when we got home.  It's an 11-cup Cuisinart, not the biggest, but perfect for us.  

The old one had already been tossed in the garbage can, but I just dug it out for a commemorative photo with its replacment.  Quite the size difference!

I haven't used it the new one yet, but perhaps tomorrow I'll whip up some pizza dough and see how it does; it even has a special dough button.  Last year's garden was a bust, but I'm hoping I'll be running many zuchinni through this summer to replenish our relish supply.  And maybe make a few loaves of zuchinni bread.

Meanwhile, what's up in the kitchen tonight?  Roasted Brussel sprouts!  They're in the oven now, and here's where I got the recipe.  

Pressure Cooking

Several of my faithful readers have some questions regarding pressure cooking, so I'm going to do a little info-mercial. :-)

I thank two blog friends for encouraging me to get a pressure cooker and then to actually use it. CJ of Created by CJ and Judy of Patchwork Times often wrote of using theirs, and when I began to ask them questions they offered a lot of help and encouragement.

Dan bought me my six-quart Fagor brand cooker two years ago for Christmas. It was one of two brands available here in our town, and it looked the best. True confession: it took me a year to use it. Yes, I was buffaloed. I finally got brave and tried it around Christmas last year. Dan later told me he had been sorely tempted to wrap it up and give it to me again!!

Here's a picture of mine sitting on my stove top:


It's nowhere near the size of my canning pressure cooker. And you can buy four-quart cookers. My blog friend CJ has several sizes and loves her four-quart.

The pressure cooker my mom had when I was growing up had a "jiggler" on the top that rattled all the while the cooker was under pressure. Today's pressure cookers are called second generation, or new generation, and have no jigglers. They are remarkably quiet and very easy to use. I could kick myself for taking so long to use mine.

Here's a picture of the top of mine:


The dial at the top can be set to no pressure, low pressure, or high pressure. Further down the handle you can see a small yellow dot that is the presssure indicator which pops up when pressure has been reached. To the right of the indicator is the slider which locks the lid closed. As you can see, pretty easy to run.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I bought Lorna Sass's book, Pressure Perfect. CJ recommended Lorna Sass to me and this book and another of hers in particular. Lorna is a pressure cooking guru and is almost single-handedly responsible for the pressure cooking revival that is starting to take place. If you google her, you'll find she has several websites and a number of videos you can watch.

I'm very much a novice at pressure cooking, but I love being able to create wonderful bean soups in a fraction of the time. Would that I had known about this when I was teaching! There are hundreds of recipes I still need to try and I look forward to learning more. Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately?) for you, dear readers, you'll probably hear about them.

Cozy

After a long, beautiful, warm fall, we seem to have come to a turning point. The wind has howled today, the rain has beaten against the windows, and there's snow on the mountain. But then, it is the 25th of October.

Dan was in the woods all day, and as the weather got stormier, I decided it would be a good day for soup and bread. I worked up the last loaf of the current batch of artisan bread dough and baked it, then I got some ham from the freezer and some dried peas from the pantry. My pressure cooker made short work of a big pot of soup and we're set for dinner tonight and tomorrow. Dan just got home, and we'll eat when he emerges from the nice warm tub.

Tomorrow, since dinner is in the bag (or pot, to be more accurate), I plan to spend the day in my sewing room. I did lots of little chores around the house including changing the sheets on our bed, so I'm certain I deserve a fun day. :-)

My last two projects have been table runners. One was for a new lady at church who lost all her possessions in a strange series of events. She worked overseas for a few years and had her things in storage. She arranged for her bank to make the necessary payments to the storage facility, but for unknown reasons, they stopped after a year. The storage facility then sold her possessions at auction for non-payment. Imagine coming back home to find everything you own is gone. And you don't even have the money! Many people have pitched in to provide Patty with new things, and she has been overwhelmed. My little part was this runner for her new table.



It was my first attempt at invisible, turned applique and I'll definitely try it again. Patty loved it and yes, she cried when I gave it to her. Such a small thing, but I pray it will help in some tiny way to make up for the loss of so many precious things from her past.