My husband will tell you I've never met a potato I didn't like. That's very true. This recipe combines baby potatoes with garlic, cream, and seasonings, so what's not to love? It's great with any kind of meat. You can see I served it with some halibut here, but it would work equally well with especially grilled meats like steak, or chicken. I found the recipe here, and while I think it's a truly unfortunate name for a website, the recipe is really, really good. I've made it multiple times in the past month.
Baby Potatoes with Creamy Garlic Sauce
10 baby potatoes
2 Tablespoons butter
2 cloves garlic minced (my garlic cloves were huge, so I just used one)
Wash and cut potatoes in bite sized pieces and boil over low heat until just done.
In a saucepan melt butter and add the garlic and over low heat cook the garlic for 2 or 3 minutes. Add cream and reduce til thick enough to coat the potatoes, maybe 10 minutes or so. Drain potatoes and add to cream sauce. Add parsley, salt and pepper before serving.
So around here this week, I've made the amazing discovery that when I'm on my own, I'm very boring. Seriously, there's not much exciting that happens when I'm left to man the fort, so to speak, while my husband plays in the hills.
Most of the week was taken up trying to take care of these peaches. I put some in bottles, but if I'm honest....I tried to give a lot of them away since I don't really need more bottled peaches.
I was on my walk one morning this week and here's the progress in the color change of my neighbor's ash trees. Just so pretty and makes me so happy. I just love fall. We are looking at a very probably freeze this weekend, so the garden may be about done.
As far as my own property goes, this tree is always the first one that turns.
The next few pictures were actually taken by my daughter-in-law, but happened at my house. Elisa came over with the boys during Gwen and Caroline's piano lesson to pick the apples off this very odd tree we have.
It has 4 different varieties grafted into the trunk, so 4 different kinds of apples grow on the same tree. There's an early sour summer apple that my husband loves, then Granny Smith, the one that is either a Macintosh or Johnathan (I think), and the I-have-no-idea variety. Emmett grabbed himself a Granny Smith here...
...and went to town on a different one here.
Samson came and checked things out.
I'm getting closer to current on my Project Life pages.
These are all recent stories.
It's always fun to see these collections of pictures come together.
I have a couple of pictures to take and insert in the following couple of weeks and then I'll be all caught up.
Sent to me from the kids and grandkids this week.....Batman David was hard at work building or maybe it's unbuilding this horse.
Poor guy had another run in with a hard surface and bit through his lip, which required another set of stitches. He was sedated to have them put in because it's much easier to put stitches in a sleeping almost 3-year old, than a wiggly, awake one.
I got this one from Marc's family of the three smiling boys.
It's hard for me to believe that it wasn't just yesterday that he was this size....and that today, as of about 7:30 this morning, he's going to be another year old....which makes me another year older.
Most of the time I'm OK with that, but every once in a while I just have to shake my head and wonder how time has passed. He has a 12 year old for heaven's sake! And I feel nostalgic for the days when he was a blond tiny guy. But mostly I'm OK with it.
He came and helped me pick those high peaches a couple of days ago.
Husband, dad, exotic tomato specialist, hunter-gatherer, eye guy...he's all of those things.
He's the one who started my husband and I on this adventure called parenting, and now he's in the thick of it himself. I sure love him. Happy birthday to my Evan!
We've had wonderfully cooler weather, which has made the roses perk up a bit.
My husband has been on another adventure, so these arrived. Kind of an exotic mix this go-round.
The peaches are ready. I've picked as many as I can reach, but there are more that need to come off before they fall off, and my husband has given me strict instructions not to get on a ladder. At some point I may have to flout his instructions, since he's not here to help.
I've also tried to pick a few of these. I know they're either Macintosh or Johnathan apples and just from looking at pictures on Google, I'm leaning toward Johnathan.
Whatever they are, they're big and very crisp.
My husband did pick a few peaches before he left town, and I used them to make some jam. I don't need a bunch of peaches bottled, but I'll have to do something with the rest of them.
I finally worked through whatever mental block I was having about the Cackle & Craft pictures and have started some catch up on Project Life pages.
It was fun to go back through the pictures and think of our trip.
I think my mother was glad we went.
And despite the crowds at my favorite places, I can see the beauty there.
I'm still a couple of weeks behind,
but I'll get totally caught up soon.
Sent to me from my kids and grandkids this week, there was this one, lonely picture from my daughter. She sent it showing this yummy peach pie she made.
We took this one yesterday. She's home for the weekend for a friend's wedding, and since my husband has been gone, it's been girl time. We've been making and eating chick food, and I'm thinking there's going to be a breakfast burrito session tomorrow.
In the past, I've made a lot of pickles. With an empty nest, I find that we aren't eating through the jars as fast as we used to, and some of them don't do as well with long, long storage.
So I found a recipe for refrigerator pickles that are similar to the bread and butter type I bottle. I found the recipe here. I didn't have anywhere near this amount of cucumbers from the one plant in the garden, so I cut the brine ingredients in half. They turned out pretty well. I'm not sure I can say they're as good as the ones I bottle, but in my present situation, they'll do.
Refrigerator Sweet Pickles
3quartspickling cucumberssliced thin
1large onionsliced thin
3cupssugar
1/4cup kosher salt (I used canning & pickling salt, which I'm assuming is either the same, or similar enough not to matter)
2cups white vinegar
1teaspoon celery seed
1teaspoon mustard seed
1teaspoon turmeric
Put sugar, salt, vinegar and spices in a gallon jar, or in my case a large glass measuring cup.
Shake well. Add sliced cucumbers and onion. Stir well.
Keep refrigerated and shake or stir well every day for four days. On the fifth day they are ready to eat.
I bottled a few garden tomatoes. I honestly don't have that much canning to do this year, since I had such a huge canning extravaganza last year.
The sweet peas have been doing a little more blooming.
But honestly, this is how I've spent most of the week. I caught a bug from somewhere and have spent a good share of the week trying my best to hack up a lung, and trying to get the gunk out of my head.
Sent to me from the kids and grandkids this week.....Evan sent quite a few this week including this picture of Quincy in his "funny coat" to help with his hair cut. Evan also said Quincy wasn't having any of it.
This was actually a picture I took of the post-Quincy hurricane that came through the house while his family was out picking the garden. There are always pretty good signs that the grandkids have been around.
This one came with the caption, "It's a fishing game!" I guess that's one thing to do with dinner noodles.
Roger and Quincy were banned from the inside of the house while I was coughing and sounding like a 3 pack-a-day smoker. The amused themselves out on the swings.
Evan's family is also in the process of moving into their new house. They're not sleeping there quite yet, but that should happen really soon. In the meantime, this was the first dinner they had there...picnic style.
I got this one from Eric's family of Ephraim "helping" Emmett practice the piano.
This one came from Collin showing the cargo plane James put together. Apparently it crashed right after this picture was taken.
Collin also sent pictures of the White House,
and the Treasury Building while they were out wandering over the weekend.
Marc sent this video of the new trick Jude has learned.
It's really hard work.
And I got one from my daughter with one of her best friends. She and another friend did a baby shower for this cute girl who is expecting twin girls, holy cow.
First off, a happy birthday to my daughter-in-law, Elisa. Happy, happy birthday to you!!
My husband and I decided we'd go up to the cabin last weekend, just the two of us.
We ran into this on our way up, which continued for a few minutes, much to my delight. We were looking forward to some relaxing time together, but that's not quite how it turned out. We arrived at the cabin to discover that the fridge had quit at some point in the time since we'd been there last. Everything was rotten, spoiled, melted and very literally growing. I cannot describe the smell to you other than to say if I'd had a gas mask, I would have worn it. The stench was unbelievable.
We spent the afternoon throwing everything away, then cleaning everything out and scrubbing every surface repeatedly with whatever kind of cleaner we could think of. We went over it with dish soap, clorox wipes, baking soda, and ammonia water. We pulled it out from the wall and tilted it to scrub behind it and under it, and still I'm not sure we'll ever get rid of the smell. It was too big for the two of us to muscle into the truck, so trying to repair it will have to wait until we have more manpower to lift it. Fortunately we got ice to put in the ice chest of food we brought up for the meals we were eating this weekend. It was just that I had to be a little creative in how I prepped things, since I didn't have what I usually depend on from the fridge.
We took a drive after dinner to clear the smell out of our heads, which was really nice. No gas mask required here.
I've been stitching quite a bit, trying to finish up the projects in the most recent Primitive Gatherings wool subscription box before the next one comes at the end of the month. This is the late summer pincushion top that I've chosen to display flat. There's always a new stitch or two to master in these projects. This time it was the traveling feather stitch between the sunflowers.
I've also been working my way through the flock of sheep.
I took a few scraps from a recent Cocoa Daisy planner kit to make a few cards. I've been trying to get pictures put together into the Project Life app from the trip to Canada. It's hard to decide what to include. Actually, what I'm having more trouble with is what to leave out.
I had some of the family here for dinner on Labor Day. We had jalapeño peppers from the garden, which Marc automatically thought meant jalapeño poppers. And why wouldn't it when they're just sitting there and Marc's willing to put them together?
We also grilled burgers, and I thought it might be kind of fun to try something a little different. I've had this recipe for "special sauce" or "secret sauce" pinned for a while now, and thought it would work on the burgers. I found the recipe here and the grown ups thought it was quite tasty on their burgers.
Special Hamburger Sauce
½ cup mayonnaise
¼ cup ketchup
2 teaspoons sweet pickle relish
2 teaspoons granulated sugar
2 teaspoons white vinegar
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
In a small bowl, whisk together all of the ingredients. Serve immediately, or refrigerate, covered, for up to 1 week.
Slather it on your burger. If you happen to have garden tomatoes and homemade buns, so much the better.
I had Marc's family for the holiday weekend, including this little cutie. He wasn't really happy with me, though, preferring I face him outward to jiggle him rather than cuddle him in and make faces. When I did that, he cried....but look at his cute little 4 month old self.
I'd been watching some strawberries ripening, hoping they'd be just right for Isaac and Levi to pick them.....and they were.
I got a stealthy cuddle from Jude while he was asleep.
A couple of nice surprises in the yard. I planted Cosmos last year and they never did anything. Apparently they re-seeded themselves.
Just look at that pretty color, and this particular bloom was a good 5" across. I've never see them that big before.
The pansies are dying and earlier in the summer I planted some zinnia seeds in the pot, hoping to have them grow up and over the panting pansies. I thought the whole experiment had failed, but there's a little zinnia sprout. It will probably freeze before I see any results, but we'll see.
We celebrated Emmett's birthday at family Sunday dinner. He wanted a cake with a rhino playing in the mud and his mama worked her magic.
Emmett seemed quite satisfied with the result.
A fairly typical bit of birthday singing in the Allan family.
Based on the house....
....a good time was had by all.
On my walk this week, I noticed the very, very first sign of fall coming. These ash trees are always the first leaves to start turning. If you look carefully, you can see a couple of spots of yellow in there.
Sent to me from the kids and grandkids this week, there were these from Eric's family. They went to the county fair,
....where there were animals, and big trucks,
.....and merry-go-round rides.
Loved this picture of the ferris wheel at dusk with the lights on.
County fairs....it's kind of like going to Canadian tourist places.
Collin's family did a little traveling to Harrisonburg, Virginia.
David and James on a wander they took.
Looks like David got a ride along the way.
And James found a place to hide.
Collin pulled up their carrots and sweet potatoes. We've never been able to get sweet potatoes to grow here in Idaho. I guess they do better in a little more humid climate.
