Reunion Weekend

This weekend we had our annual Light/Vest/Connor reunion in Huffville. There was a big turnout this year, biggest crowd we've seen in a while. Cupcake said it wasn't a real reunion, because there were no fistfights and the police did not show up, which is customary at the Price reunions. We did manage a good meal, but we missed a regular reader of this blog (Our cousins Bill and Francis). We hope they make it next year, so we can talk recipes and whatnot.
This year we whipped up three dozen buttermilk biscuits and homemade butter to go with the spiral ham Pop's supplied, a pasta salad, and a fresh from the garden strawberry rhubarb pie.

Two hours prior, all this was still growing. Now that's fresh

Reunion red, green stayed home

We had a pretty good spread working....

The pie was a hit, we had a few requests for the recipe. We think next year we will save up a whole harvest of rhubarb and take about three pies. Give the people what they want.
This past week there wasn't much going on. With the lack of rain there hasn't been much action in the garden, except for a picking of collards to go with our once a week smoked ribs.

The lemon trees are growing right along, so by next week we may have to re-pot them.

Raspberry season is in full swing, and after we harvested all the berries around the house, we went for a drive down Goose Creek. It's a narrow dirt road with very few homes on it, and berry vines on both sides of the road for miles. As we stopped along the way, Cupcake shot a few rustic scenes.

We are blessed to live in such a beautiful part of the country. We ended the week with chicken wing Sunday.
K&K

Graduation?

This past week was the last week of school. Cupcake and Big Man attended a ceremony for Kattie, who is moving from middle school to high school. They called it a "graduation" and there was pomp and circumstance related to a graduation.

There were "awards" for almost perfect attendance. Almost?
The actual perfect attendance was rewarded, all A's, all A's and B's. Big Man thought as he sat through the ceremony that the only words shared when he went from middle to high school were "take all your crap, you're not coming back to this school in the fall".
Things change, it's how the world works.

 On the usual stuff front, we finished with the potato boxes this week. We added dirt to the top, and the vines began to bloom, so now we wait.

Back a couple of weeks ago, Big Man started making home made lemonade. We had a paper towel full of seeds from the lemons, and being the gardening nerds we are, we read up on planting the seeds. We found it can be done, so we stuck some in peat starters and stuck them in the sun. They sprouted this week, so we look forward to having home grown lemon trees in the house this winter. We started one for Pops too.

Raspberries started coming in this week, and we picked a plastic container full of them in the evening when we walk the mutt. Cupcake found a recipe for home made raspberry ice cream, so you just know we put those berries to good use.

Pureed peaches, heavy cream and sweetened condensed milk

Puree raspberries and swirl in

Finished product, swirled and frozen

One last treat on the menu this week was a Big Man and Pops only item. Cupcake fried us up a few slices of scrapple for Sunday breakfast. Cupcake became a big fan of chip beef gravy, but scrapple just wasn't going to be on her plate. If you've never had it, just know it's pretty much every leftover part of the pig ground up into a block that tastes like home made love. It's also a guaranteed bout of gout waiting to happen, but they make pills for gout, so treat ourselves we did.

Cupcake made up for the lack of scrapple with chicken wing Sunday.
K&K

Happy Birthday US Army!!

This week the US Army turned 239. Big Man is proud to have been a small part of keeping that streak alive. Big Man flies a flag 24/7 here at The Acre, but special occasions bring out his banners.

We had a special event this week, one we have been looking forward to for several months. We received our first wine club shipment from Stephen Amell. For those who don't know, he plays The Green Arrow on TV. He runs his own Facebook page, does several charity events, and is very fan accessible. He also started his own winery recently, and held a "first come, first serve" membership drive to join his wine club. He only has limited amounts of wine, so there were only 300 openings. Cupcake and I scored one of the first slots in the lotto, and have been patiently waiting for the UPS driver ever since. Friday our wait ended.

We don't really drink wine (OK, we don't drink wine at all) but we have friends that do, so we figure we are supporting a nice guy doing good work, and keeping wine on hand for the off chance someone accepts an invite to The Acre.
We hit a couple yard sales this past week, and we picked up a couple items we thought we would share.

We found this old fire extinguisher, and a ceramic jug.

Big Man found this military "Jerry Can" just like the ones he used on the old style Jeep, rocking some old school gas. We are currently debating sand blasting it and repainting it, or leaving it as is. Opinions are welcome in the "Comments" section below.
We went up the last plank on our potato boxes this week, we still have a little room for dirt, but we are in the final stretch for potato growing this season.

We also have chicken news, one of our recent additions started laying this week. This was way earlier than we expected, and the eggs are not much bigger than marbles, and are yolk free, but we are still excited to start getting eggs from the new girls.

Our guinea birds are perking right along, they started getting their adult feathers, and we've weaned them off the heat lamp at night.

"Eggo", the buttless rooster, came to visit us one night while we were cooking fried squash on the back deck.

Or he may have smelled the brisket we had smoking, it turned out even better than the last one. With each brisket, we seem to get more tender and more flavor.

Cupcake picked a big mess of basil from her herb garden on the deck, and we have it drying right now. Canning season is about to jump off, and this will be a welcome addition to our cans soon.

And we've been asked recently if we still make our own butter and laundry detergent and whatnot. We do. We just made a batch of both this week.

We ended the week with our thing, chicken wings.
K&K

D Plus 70

It was D-Day weekend this past week, and we learned that most sheeple had more concern about Lebron James suffering through a night of basketball without air conditioning, or where the Kartrashians were spending their honeymoon.

We weep for humanity.
Back on this planet, we kept to our usual routine. The first order of business was food, if you can imagine that? We started the week out by clearing some room in the meat freezer. We had this turkey breast taking up space, so big man thawed it out and smoked it up to start the week off right.

And while it was smoking there was a special treat in the works. Big man remembered how the family used to make home made lemonade and limeade, and we just happen to have some half gallon jars, so we squoze some fresh juice and drinks were served.

A little later in the week we got another picking of collards from the garden, and just had to smoke some pork ribs to go with them.

Big man has a brisket rubbed down and getting happy in the fridge for next weekend, and there was a small part of the flat that was too long for the bag. We cut it off and smoked it at the same time we did the ribs, and keep it on hand for eggs and collards and whatnot. It's handy to have a little smoked brisket in the fridge at all times.
Our last big meal was Saturday, when we fried up a cast iron skillet full of squash and green tomatoes. Or as we call it around here, "Cupcake Crack".

Its pretty simple to make, we just slice the veggies, soak them in buttermilk, then flour them in season flour, corn starch, corn meal, slap ya mama, then sprinkle a touch of slap ya mama on while they still sizzling.
For the work part of the week, we added another row of planks to the potato boxes, and more dirt. We only have one more plank to go up, then we stop and let them make themselves. We hope to have potatoes by August.

We also had to replant our corn this weekend. I know two of the three readers of this blog have gardens, anyone else have to replant this year?
We found a stray rooster this week. He lives behind the dumpsters near Terry's Fork, we named him "Oscar" (the grouch, lives in a trash can on Sesame Street, get it?) We gave him some feed and have been supplying him with water with vinegar to get rid of any worms he may have picked up living in the wild. We are waiting to see if we have any roosters in our bunch, if not, we may just adopt him. He sure is a purty bird.

While we were rooster taming, Cupcake found a terrapin turtle passing through. We checked his belly, no initials, no dates. Cupcake had never heard of marking a turtle before, she got schooled.

We moved our guinea birds out to the coop this weekend, and they seem to have adapted quite well. We look forward to them getting a little bigger so we can let them free in the run.

Cupcake did some decorating with the crocks this week, we think it's a neat way of displaying our crocks, adding to the country feel and still having them accessible for use.

And the last picture is of the cabinet Cupcake's mother gave her a few years back. It's an old bakers cabinet complete with flour sieve and storage. We have been blessed enough to fill it completely up with dry goods. So if anyone reading this talks to the Outlaws, let Cookie know we could use another one? Thanks

We ended the week with Chicken Wing Sunday, and it rocked as usual.
K&K