Today's Harvest

Yes, they taste as good as they look! Diana is eating them faster that she can chew! So much for her dress.

"Big Candy"

We got Karilyn and Heidi giant chocolate Hershey's kisses for Valentine's Day. I was especially excited for Heidi's reaction because Hershey's kisses are her favorite kind of nandy.

She opened it up and said "BIG CANDY".





On another note, I'm a little sad that she says "candy" now, as opposed to her "nandy". Oh yes, and once again, she's in her deer hunting jammies, now you can begin to understand the problem.

Professional Gingerbread house makers, WATCH OUT!

We created some "really cool" houses today. Shall I enter them in a contest?





The pictures just don't do them justice, they are even more awful in real life. I'm really bad at gingerbread houses!

Yum!

Tonight I gave Dave directions on making dinner while I went out for a run. I've made this once before and it is yummy, and very easy to make! It has 3 ingredients:

Sausage
Apples
and Brown Sugar

Cook the sausage about half way and then add the apples (peeled, thinly sliced and dipped in brown sugar) and finish cooking. Don't ask about times, I have no recipe, I just guess.




And here is Heidi icing the cake!

A Rainbow Cake for Karilyn's Birthday

Happy Birthday Karilyn!

My little girl turns 5 tomorrow! We celebrated her birthday yesterday with a rainbow cake. Her Grandmas, Grandpas, and Uncle Joe came to celebrate with us. We had a lot of fun. We got Jimmy Johns subs and I made beans and soup, but the cake was the highlight of the party.
It was six layers tall!
In rainbow colors!
I borrowed 4 cake pans, doubled my favorite yellow cake recipe, divided it up and colored them all. Then after baking we iced it.

We had so much fun making this cake.

The Best Salad

All summer and fall I have enjoyed the best salads ever! It's one of my favorite blessing of having a garden. Sorry, the picture didn't turn out so well.

The ingredients in this one were:

• Lettuce (from my garden)
• Green Onions (from my garden)
• A tomato (from my garden)
• Beets (which would have been from my garden if Peter Cottontail hadn't eaten them, so these were from the local farmer's market)
• A hard-boiled egg (from a local farm)
• Cottage cheese (from Giant Eagle, you can't produce it all on a city sized lot)
• And my own homemade Italian salad dressing

I'm going to be so sad when the first frost comes and I can't walk out to my garden to get a tomato. I'm only growing yellow ones next year, they are so good!

I had to add this picture, it's Heidi's favorite place to lay

Barbecued Beef

Last night for dinner I made Dave's favorite: barbecued beef. He always requests it! I will leave the recipe at the bottom of my blog. It's easy and yummy!

Here's my sandwich:

Here's Dave's sandwich:
Karilyn wanted her "chicken" with no bun:
She calls any meat that she likes chicken. Turkey is actually called "juicy chicken".

Heidi wanted to have fruity pebbles instead:

I don't know what I'm going to do with her

So here's the recipe:

3 pounds boneless chuck roast..but I suppose you could use "chicken"

1 1/2 cups ketchup

1/4 cup packed brown sugar

1/4 cup red wine vinegar

2 tablespoons Dijon-style mustard

2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce (I actually didn't put this in last night because we were out.)

1 tablespoon liquid smoke flavoring (I never put this in)

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

Put roast in crock pot. Combine remaining ingredients in a bowl and pour over roast. 8 to 10 hours on low or 4 to 5 hours on high. It's good either way. Remove roast and shred it with a fork. Place shredded meat back in pot and stir.

I usually cut off as much fat as possible before I cook it.