Time Passes Far too Quickly

I've just been thinking - last year at this time we were back home from our first ever big family vacation to San Antonio, Texas on Thanksgiving weekend. It was my husband's dream for most of his life to go there and see the Alamo - in fact the first night when we drove by it on the bus and it was all lit up, a tear or two made their appearance in his eyes.

In the 22 years that we have been together we had never been on a big trip. Even our honeymoon was a weekend away in Banff. I am so glad he got to realize his dream and we so want to be able to go back as soon as we are able. It was a short year ago, and yet it seems so, so long ago. There has been a lot happen in the past year. Some really high highs and some really low lows and it is almost a wonder that I have even survived some of it.

Just shortly after our return from the big trip a huge tragedy struck our family and we lost such a dear, precious and generous lady. My mother-in-law was amazing to me and she left us on November 2, 2009. How we have gotten through this last year without her I don't know, but time seems to march on. I miss her so much.

I have gotten through the funeral, helping my husband navigate being the executor of the will and the scattering of the ashes being strong and steady. When I was canning tomatoes this summer though, I lost it. I turned into a complete blubbering mess while I was standing over a sink of ice water stripping 25 pounds of tomatoes of their skins. She loved my canned tomatoes, actually she loved everything I made for her. I would never be able to make them for her again. The wave of emotion that took me over was incredible and overwhelming and I grieved for her probably more deeply than I had all year.

This beautfiul lady taught me so much and I have so many wonderful memories of her . She has taught me so much about affection and caring and generosity. She loved her boys so much and as her first daughter-in-law, she welcomed me with such open arms and was so willing to accept me as her son's choice for a bride.  She was there for me - no matter what!

My life is different than it would have been because she was a part of it and I am so grateful for the years that I had with her. She was so beautiful inside and out. 

Beautiful Freedom

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Make me a deliverer of your love in this broken land. Make me a vessel of praise and a conduit of your prophesy. Heal my woundedness so that I can bring your healing to the hurting. Remove the scar tissue and calouses from my heart so that it can pump with new life for you, because of you.

You have bought me for the highest imaginable price. You have valued me so much that you gladly paid the price for me and yet it is because you paid the price that I have value. I have no value on my own to anyone. I am significant because you died for me. Because you bought me I am free.

How's that for a mind twister, when you really think about it. Historically, when a person is purchased, they are owned by the purchaser. If they are owned, they are slaves required to do the master's bidding. How incredible that we were bought lock, stock and barrel and yet it is through the purchase that we are made free.  How like God to do the complete reverse of how the world does things. How tremendous to have such a redeemer that purchases his own to set them free. We have been bought to be His lover and friend and beautiful bride, not to be enslaved. 

God you are so good!

Further Adventures from my Kitchen - Krautrunzels

My wonderful mother-in-law made this dish where she stuffed buns with hamburger and cabbage. She always called them Groutrunzels but they being a German dish involving cabbage, I’m thinking the correct term is actually Krautrunzels because Kraut is cabbage in German and when you say it they actually sound very similar and if the person who gave her the recipe spoke with an accent, even more. My husband loves them.

This past week I had planned to make these treats for my hunny as a surprise. I had asked him if he wanted me to make something else on the weekend and gave him 2 choices. While he was outside tending the Bar B Q I pulled out my mother-in-law’s recipe box to try to find the recipe. My husband came back in the house and said “you know if you want to make me something you could make me Groutrunzels”. Way to spoil the surprise my love! ;) I guess that meant it was time for me to do this for him because it was on his mind too.

I couldn’t find a recipe for them though in her treasured recipe box so I phoned her best friend who used to make them with her all the time. She didn’t have a recipe but she knew which bun recipe in the box to use and told me how to make the filling. The phone call sent her on a lovely trip down memory lane. She misses her dearest friend as much as I miss my beautiful, wonderful, loving, generous mother-in-love. Tomorrow marks the first anniversary of her passing to a better place. The void that she left is incredible.

Back to my adventure… I have helped my mother make buns numerous times, but always with the punching down of the dough and the shaping of the buns, never with the actual making with proofing the yeast and kneading the dough. It was with much trepidation that I tackled this project. The recipe that she used is called Air Buns. I did a little dance when after 10 minutes of soaking in the warm sugar water my yeast was the way it should be. I kneaded the dough like a pro warmed up my oven and let it sit for 2 hours and clapped joyfully when I opened the oven to see that it had risen just the way it was supposed to. I let my son tackle the punching down of the dough. Let it rise for another hour. In the meantime I made the filling, which is so simple. Hamburger chopped cabbage and diced onion with salt & pepper and I added some steak spice (because I add steak spice to almost everything). I stuck it in the freezer for a couple of minutes to cool it a bit and you want to drain the fat/liquid so that the inside of the bun doesn’t get greasy.

Finally, hours after beginning, the process comes together. You grab a handful of the risen dough and pinch it off. You roll it flat and then spoon in some of the hamburger mixture. Then you pull in the edges and pinch them together and put the newly formed bun, pinched end down on the cookie sheet.

Set the cookie sheet aside covered with a tea towel for another hour or three. Then bake according to the bun recipe.

My husband’s family dips them in ketchup when they eat them.

It was a lot of work and so time consuming, but it was worth every minute to see how happy it made my wonderful husband. We figured it has been at least 5 years since the last time he had one. It won’t be 5 years before he has them again.

Adventures in my kitchen

My culinary skills have been a real adventure in developing. I have always known the basics that I learned in my mother's kitchen and home ec classes and often tend to stick to the same tried and true recipes that I always make. Go-tos that I don't have to think about and don't have to get creative for. When we were first married, I didn't cook much. We were usually busy doing things and working and we ate out far too much. When I did cook it was at a very basic level.

When my son was born and I was home on maternity leave that had to change. I would spend hours combing through all of my recipe books and trying various things. I would have supper on the table when my husband came home from work and he never knew what he was getting (poor guy). Unfortunately for him, not everything worked out well. I have learned many lessons in how NOT to cook. But my husband has valiantly eaten nearly everything that I have prepared and has always been encouraging.

Most of the incidents and offensive things that I tried to feed to my poor hubby have long been forgotten as my skills have improved but there is one incident that still gets brought up from time to time, and just yesterday again. My son was maybe 2 at the time.

I decided that I was going to try to make Chicken Noodle Soup - from scratch!

I bought a nice little chicken and had it simmering with onion and celery and carrots and spices ALL DAY LONG. Oh boy it smelled so so good. The tastes I took told me I had a wonderful soup on my hands and I couldn't wait to impress my husband with this wonderful creation that I made. When it came time to take the chicken and vegetables out of the stock I was puzzled by how best to do that without burning the skin off my hands. I had an "aha" moment and thought I will pour it through my strainer which will catch all of the solids, then I can cut up the chicken when it cools a bit.

As the very last little bit of stock poured down my drain, I very sadly realized that I did not think far enough ahead to put a bowl under the strainer. I cried. All that I had left of my whole day of cooking was a pile of boiled chicken meat. I got my husband to pick up some chicken pieces with bones on his way home and tried so very hard to salvage something - but alas it was a watery broth and tough chewy flavourless chicken. Probably the worst culinary disaster that I personally have ever made. I am so glad that now I can cook (and I am positive my husband is too). I don't even try to cook chicken stock anymore due to time restraints really and it is so easy to buy it at the grocery store and add it to the soups that I make now to save time.

I have really grown in my adventure level in this past year. I have lived my life really not caring for spicy hot foods but my husband is slowly converting me. I made salsa one year because I had picked up 25 pounds of tomatoes but didn't know what to do with them. I tweaked it the next year and this year I have perfected it and made 3 batches for home and helped someone else make a batch. While making the third batch my husband asked for me to try to make hot sauce (What, you can make hot sauce at home??? was the first thing that came to mind). While making hot sauce he suggested that he might really like bar-b-que sauce to come out of the mad science of my kitchen as well.

I made the sauce as well as a dry rib rub the other night and my hunny massaged the rub into a rack of ribs and let it marinate over night and slow baked them in the oven yesterday and then put them on the BBQ low and slow and slathered them over and over again with the sauce. I don't care for ribs so he made me a pork chop. I tasted the ribs though and even I thought they were impressively good. I didn't actually cook the meal, but I brought a whole ton of flavour to the party, so I think it counts.

Hot Sauce

While making my third batch of salsa at home, my darling husband came to me and asked the age old question "Do you know what I would really like you to try to make?" The answer was hot sauce. I have actually never heard of anyone making such a thing at home. Gasp. My hunny is the creative genius behind the mad science that happens in my kitchen. We make such a good team. I don't know how many times he suggests that I make something that I would never think of and when I make it whatever it is turns out so good.



Off to my favorite internet recipe sites to research just how does one go about making hot sauce. What goes into them besides peppers? How do you cook it and how do you blend it? Do you remove the seeds? What about balances of flavours? There are so many commercial varieties of hot sauce just where does one begin to try to create one at home?



His favorite hot sauce in our fridge is mail ordered from Texas and the ingredient list just shows habanero peppers so I found a recipe for habanero hot sauce. On my way to the farmer's market to get the 12 habanero peppers necessary for the sauce it occurred to me that I should also make one that has the same blend of peppers that my salsa does, because he loves it so much.


I modified the recipe for the habanero hot sauce slightly to have regular vinegar and lime juice as those were also listed on the ingredient bottle of the sauce in my fridge and made the blend of salsa peppers with the apple cider vinegar that the original recipe for the habenero sauce called for. The habanero sauce came out pure heat. My hunny loves the hot but for him it is more about the flavour that the peppers bring. I went to the grocery store and added a whole lot of pineapple juice to mellow it a bit (I don't think it worked but we will see as the flavours tend to develop over time with such things).

The salsa blend on the other hand worked beautifully and my hunny loves the depth and balance of flavours. It will long be in our fridge and will accent many dishes in my future cooking adventures.

Baby Blanket

My niece had a beautiful baby girl in August. Seems like just yesterday she was 2 and my son was a baby and now she has her own wee one. Wow time flies.


Because I tend to be crafty and love making things for people I was inspired to make a blanket for this precious little one. Her mama's favorite color is green so I wanted to make sure that I incorporated that. Once I started shopping for fabric I ended up with 3 different blankets. I made one with a beautiful pale green cuddle satin backing and the front is pink, green and white chenille which is so, so soft. The second is pure white minkee back with green and white polka dot flannel. And then with the left-over I made a slightly smaller blanket with the chenille on one side and the minkee on the other. I wish I had such soft blankets for my son when he was that little.

Here are the instructions. So easy to do.

Cut the back 40 X 35 inches and the front 35 X 30 inches. Fold the edge of the back over 1/4 inch all the way around and press. Lay the front in the center of the back wrong sides together. I measured in from the edge 2 1/4 inches and made marks all the way around so that I could make sure the top ended up in the right place. I put a lot of pins in as the chenille was quite stretchy and I didn't want it to get puckered or out of shape as I sewed it.




I mitred my corners - it is easiest if you snip in from the outside corner to just before the top fabric corner, remove excess fabric and keep playing around with the fabric until it to looks right (I was so busy doing it that I forgot to take a picture of it). Then I just started at a corner and sewed to the next corner and then up the mitred edge as close to the edge of the fabric as I could. Then I sewed the next side until I was all the way around and voila.


The satin and chenille blanket is a wonderful light and soft blanket and the flannel minkee combination is so warm and cozy and fuzzy.



What mama wouldn't want such a wonderfully soft blankie to wrap their precious wee one in. My husband actually wants me to make a queen-sized one for our bed.

Salsa Recipe

For those who have asked here it is. Chop everything as fine as you like it to be in your salsa. The tomatoes will break down a little bit. I hand chopped everything except the hot peppers which I put in a mini food processor to make sure that their flavour was evenly distributed throughout the salsa.

Salsa

8 cups (7 lbs) tomatoes (peeled & chopped)
2 large Onions (approx 4 cups)
2 red bell peppers
2 yellow bell peppers
2 orange bell peppers
2 cups celery
3 cloves garlic, minced
6+ hot peppers (jalapeno, banana or other hot peppers) My recipe is 2 Jalapeno, 2 Habanero, 3 Red Serrano, 2 Cherry Peppers, 2 Green Serrano chopped very finely)
4 small cans tomato paste
6 tsp pickling salt
2 tsp Cumin
2 tsp ground corriander
2 cups white vinegar

Chop all tomatoes, onions, bell peppers & celery as fine as you like your salsa to be (if you like a really runny salsa use a food processor but if you like it chunky chop it all by hand - the time is worth it). Put all ingredients in a large pot and bring to a simmer for 30 minutes. Taste and then add dried crushed chilies (1/2 to 1 tsp at a time) to get it to the heat you like.

Put into 250ml jars and can in boiling water canner for 15 minutes. Remove and rest for 24 hours before moving.

This recipe tastes awesome straight out of the pot (cooled of course), but it improves and gets a bit hotter with time. If you can, wait about a month for the flavours to fully develop.

Canning and other stuff

I have been thinking about my grandmother a lot lately. She was a farm wife and she canned - I am told right up to the year she died. Anytime she was in the kitchen she was singing. She was such an amazing lady - one of my biggest regrets in life is that I lost her in the divorce of my parents as she was my father's mother. When my son was 2 we went to visit her so that he could meet his great-grandparents on that side of the family. She was a woman who lived grace and love. She was so happy as that year was the year that she had been married longer to her second husband than her first (who passed away before I was born) and the looks of love that passed between them made me hope for that kind of love when my husband and I reach our late 70s. I had a beautiful opportunity to build relationship with her as an adult, however life was just so busy and I never made the time - how I wish that I had. I am blessed to have the memories of her that I do, and with the grace that she walked in, I know she forgives me.


I have never really been one to do canning except the couple of years that I made salsa but this year I have spent time every weekend canning something or other. My darling husband had to build me shelves to hold it all and they will soon be full. Pickles and cherries and pickled carrots and salsa and tomatoes are all gracing these shelves and tonight my latest creation will be joining them. This one truly is my creation. I looked at a recipe to get ratios for the sugar, water and alcohol and for the timing but other than that everything is mine (my husband suggested the saskatoons and they really contribute a lot to the flavour).


My latest adventure this weekend is canned peaches with huckleberries and saskatoons. So yummy! I poached the fruit in a mixture of 1 part sugar, 1 part water and 1/4 part blueberry vodka (the alcohol cooks off), added some cinnamon (just enough to add flavour but not enough to be able to say it has it) and a splash of vanilla.

I kept some out for us to eat for desert last night and we poured it over vanilla ice cream - so good. The jars look really pretty too.

New to this

So this is a whole new experience for me and I don't really know where to begin. I have always written for myself and really don't know if ever anyone will read this, but even if I just use this as a place to do things for me that is ok too.

I am inspired by a friend who does this and is probably the most wonderfully creative person that I have ever met. She knocks my socks off everytime I read one of her blogs and see how she takes pictures and the crafts she does with her kids. She amazes me and I wish I could be her, even though I do alot of the same things, like take pictures and do crafts and stuff.

This past month has been spent being an old fashioned domestic (I want to say goddess, but that just doesn't sit right) blast from the housewives of the past - only I have been working. I have spent a day pitting and canning wonderful cherries brought back from the Flathead Lake region of Montanna and another day freezing huckleberries, picked on the side of a mountain at Hungry Horse Dam also in Montanna and Saskatoons (sadly purchased at the Saskatoon Farm - prepicked). I have also spent 2 separate days making the most delicious salsa ever and my latest adventure - Pickles - both dill and carrot (apparently my hubby's fav). I hope they turn out. I have never attempted this particular feat before. Of course it takes forever to actually find out if they turn out.