It's Almost Fall Y'all

I am falling behind on my goal of 20 posts for this month. I am determined to meet it. That means posting everyday for the remainder of the month with a couple days of multiple posts. Get ready for a bunch of random stuff from my life.

One of the reasons for my lack of posting is that I have started fall cleaning. The first week I worked on the front yard and porch. Both were a huge mess with tons of weeds in the flower beds and general disarray. I cleaned out the majority of the hanging baskets on the porch. Many of the flowers were still good and simple root-bound in the pots. I planted most of the plants around the porch. Without the hanging baskets though, the porch looked a bit blah. I went ahead and put up some fall decorations.

The first was this straw broom decoration for the front door. I liked the way it turned out - simple but cute. I have to say my favorite part of my house is the red front door. I got a few weird looks from the neighbors when I painted it red, but it looks wonderful. I am not exactly a cream and grey/neutral colors type of person.

Next dh helped me with the fall display. We put three bales of hay together (thanks Dad!). Next we added the potted mums. The pots were on clearance and the mums on sale. The pumpkins came from the compost pile. The pumpkins we dumped there last year left behind seeds, and we ended up with a bunch of pumpkins from the plants that sprouted. I used some fake flowers and leaves and ribbon off of last year's fall wreath. The final additions were a scarecrow and crow. I thought the bird was very Alfred Hitchcock.

One part-time addition is a cute kitty cat. I am just glad she has not tried to eat the crow.

It's Not THAT kind of Church

I am going to preface this by saying I am not downing anyone's beliefs. I simply do not share them. This is meant to be an entertaining blog entry.

A couple of weeks ago I get a call from my uncle who cleans our church. He said, "One of the throws (blankets) from church is on your porch. Wash it 'cause I used it to catch a snake." My first thought was SNAKE!!! I have a major phobia of snakes. I was okay-ish when there was a mouse in the piano. A snake is an entirely different matter. Then I thought 'okay the snake is out of the church'. Whew! Next I wondered if the snake had friends that he invited over. I spent a good portion of the following Sunday staring at the pedals of the piano and picturing the snake from "Anaconda" curled up in there.

Fast forward a week and I get a call from the pastor. He had a snake skin and wanted me to bring my camera. The pastor knows I love taking pictures of everything -- even the odd stuff.

Ewww! Luckily it was found in the choir section and not near the piano. Sorry to any church choir members. Dh announced that from looking at the picture it was only (ha! ha!) a rat snake. Thank goodness we got rid of that rat in the piano. Living in the country can be quite an adventure with all of God's creatures. I sincerely hope they stay outside from this point forward.

August Daring Bakers Challenge

I typed this up when I finished the challenge and forgot to post it. Things have been busy here. At least I am only about a day behind. I need to add "post challenge" to my to-do list. Honest if I do not write things down they never get done. Sorry!

First of all anyone following my blog knows that I have been doing a pantry challenge for the month of August. I had a maximum of $10/week for any grocery purchases. I was waiting anxiously to see what the August challenge would be and how it would fit into my plan. It turns out that the challenge was Chocolate Eclairs with a Chocolate Glaze. I had some chocolate left from last month's challenge so I did not even need to purchase anything for the August challenge. It is amazing that my pantry challenge remained intact.

I used the choux pastry recipe and the chocolate pastry cream recipe as written. I did just melt some chocolate to put on the two that I photographed. I did not want chocolate on all of them so I only needed glazing for a couple.

I had done a cream puff long ago and could not even tell you if the recipes were similar. I ended up with 20 mini-eclairs, which were actually a nice size for eating in the end. I thought the choux pastry came together well. I even mixed the eggs in by hand since I was not sure if my mixer would have held up to it.

The pastry cream was the part that worried me the most. I could see myself ending up with a nice pot of milky scrambled eggs. I actually had no trouble tempering the yolks. It also came together nicely. I have to be honest that it seems more like pudding than pastry cream though. Still it was good. My mom declared it nothing like chocolate pudding because she liked this and hates chocolate pudding. Here is my finished product:

This was one of the simpler Daring Baker's Challenges I have completed. I did get smart this time and spread it out over two days, which I am sure made a difference. In the future I would make something similar again. I would probably test a different choux pastry recipe and make puffs instead of eclairs. I am looking forward to seeing what September holds for the Daring Bakers!

I'm Still Here

I have been very lax in posting to my blog recently, which is obvious since my last post was a week ago. I am setting a goal of 20 posts for this month. I think that will be an easy goal to reach. I thought I would start off the month with the picture below. It was taken the day before Tropical Storm Fay came through here. I want to pass it on to everyone in the path of Gustav with good wishes for safety.

Best Laid Plans

I had all these wonderful plans for posts, and then..... I had been sick with allergies for the past couple of weeks. This last week I had reached the decision that I was allergic to myself. No matter what I did I could not stop sneezing. I took over the counter medicine when my prescription meds were not helping. I finally ended up with generic benedryl, which slowed the sneezing down while making me sleepy.

Dh and I still made it through the week without going over the $29 grocery budget. Below is a picture of 80% of what I bought. The other 20% was left behind at the store. I was sick and silly me did not double check behind the bag person to see that all the groceries went in my cart. Dh went back later to pick them up, and he put them away before I could take a separate photo.

Not all of these were necessities. Some were items that I had coupons for and did not want to miss out on purchasing. The pizza was an impulse purchase but came in handy one night when I could not bear to cook. The good thing is that we made it through week 3. Here I am in the last week. I can actually see some empty space in the freezer and the cupboards are close to bare. I am planning a big shop for next week. I still have $10 left to spend this week. It is hard to believe that I will have stuck to my $40 budget. My dream and nightmare is that the sales ads will be fantastic this week, and my plan will fall apart inches from the finish line.

Pantry Challenge Week 3

Last night we ate hamburgers and chips leftover from Saturday night. I did not take any pictures since that was not really an exciting meal. I did find out that I need food for two potlucks this weekend. One requires a dessert and the other will be two finger food items. I need to rummage around in the freezer and see what I can come up with. I am thinking mini-cupcakes for the dessert item since I will only need to buy a cake mix. One of my two finger foods will probably be meatballs in sauce as that will utilize some of the ground meat I have in the freezer. I will also do something sweet but am not sure what yet. I still need to stick within my $29 budget ($10 this week, $10 last week, and $9 first week). I will shop carefully as I need a few small items to round out this week's meals and powdered milk.

Garden Update - Finally

The spring garden is pretty much done. I have one Roma tomato plant with two tomatoes and a couple of pepper plants that are still hanging on. The pumpkin and watermelons did nothing. The cucumber plants have been gone for over a month. I do still have bunches of herbs. They are all out of control. I have mint everywhere. It and the oregano seem to be in a battle for dominance of the garden. I will be cutting and drying some herbs in the coming weeks. Since I have a bunch of basil, I think I will try some pesto.

My gardening thoughts have turned to fall. I know that the herbs will hang around. Most of those will actually survive the winter. I have a section of lettuce that is about two weeks old.

Next to it I planted some spinach. I mixed in some organic fertilizer (AKA: horse manure). I planted it the day I took these photos so nothing to show yet.

I also started some cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, and kohlrabi seeds. Now I have never grown any of these things before so this will be a learning experience. I am encouraged by the fact that I have some sprouts. One book I read said do not attempt to grow these items from seeds as they are difficult to sprout. So far so good though. Time will tell if these are things I want to grow every year. I have never eaten kohlrabi and have yet to find anyone around here that knows what it is. The description in the garden catalog sounded good plus I like to be a little adventurous in the garden.