Christmas Eve

We've been taking a lot of pictures today, so we thought we would break up several updates rather than one long one next week.
Deadshot was itching to get at the presents this morning, and Cupcake gave the OK for one package early.

After the package was open, Deadshot wanted to do some baking. Of course we made cookies for Santa.....

Big Man whipped up a pie crust, and we made a strawberry/rhubarb pie

Deadshot got in on the act as well. We had a bit of pie crust left over after we rolled it out, and she got the idea to decorate the pie before we baked it

Kids are off to spend some time with their Paw Paw, more pics tomorrow.
K&K

Last Weekend Till Christmas

We had a busy weekend, last minute gift wrapping and whatnots. We also spent most of our time in the kitchen.
The Chirruns had a death in the family, and Big Man was requested to whip up a cherry cobbler, which we took as high praise.

We also spent the day making cheese balls. Cupcake is like the Big Man when it comes to cheese balls, she does not use a recipe, she goes by look and instinct. These turned out really well, even if it is short on onions (by Light standards).

Deadshot is no fan of onions at all, so we cut out a small ball for her, with no onions

Big man spent the day baking cookies. The new cookie is the cranberry walnut he found a recipe for on the Old Farmers Almanac. They really turned out well, and even had a request for some from Rhulenbarb's parents, which again, was taken as high praise.

After baking, we did a couple outside things, even in the rain. Our ladies had stopped laying eggs over the past month, and we were becoming concerned. Cupcake, being the research specialist she is, found that many people across the country were experiencing the same problem, so we took it as a bird thing. We changed their diet a little, and added alfalfa pellets to their diet, and now we're back to getting eggs. This is one of our second generation ladies, we hatched her this spring, now she's bringing the love to our cast iron skillet on a daily basis.

It was raining, but it was almost 65 degrees out, Big Man changed the oil in Cupcake's truck. Even though she was told her truck was impossible to self change. We are working on the assumption Big Man is a better mechanic than the person who told her it couldn't be done.

Final prep for Christmas, Big Man smoked our country ham. He has never smoked a piece of meat this large before, but we are all standing by for ham biscuits. Follow up report may be in order.

 As always, we ended with "Chicken Wing Sunday" and even Pop came over for a helping or two.
Merry Christmas from our family to yours.
K&K

Christmas Countdown

We're getting to crunch time for Christmas, and The Acre is abuzz with Christmas type stuff, but we also have the usual stuff going on as well.  First off, baking.
Big man has lost his mind in the kitchen lately, and pie crust is the new obsession. It comes in handy for both dessert and dinner. First off, he made a smoked chicken pot pie in a cast iron skillet.

Smoked chicken pot pie before

And after

Pops loves him some oysters, and the local Kroger had them on sale this week, so we bought a quart and made a fish fry one night.

Oyster prep

Fried oysters and fried catfish

 And we made sure canning season is still in, when big man picked a large bucket full of turnips and canned them up during a cold snap. Five and a half quarts will come in handy this winter.

We also made a cherry pie and a batch of cookies for one of our neighbors.

From Scratch cranberry walnut cookies

Cherry pie, with our home canned cherries from this spring

Making the crust all purty

Cupcake has been working on the Mantle 

Fraidy Mutt is exhausted from all the hub-bub

And it wouldn't be the Christmas season without home made fudge. After Sunday breakfast, we whipped up a batch.

And as always, we ended our weekend with "Chicken Wing Sunday". Hope everyone has a stress free countdown to Christmas.
K&K

Birthday Weekend

This week was a prep for ice week. An ice storm has been bearing down on us so we made prep work all week. Starting up generators, topping off gas cans and car tanks, sawing and splitting firewood, then a legally required trip to Wallyworld for TP, milk and bread.
We left a few sunflower plants out back of the house for our feathered friends over the winter. They seem to appreciate our efforts when there is snow and ice.

The storm didn't amount to much, and the chirruns had to go to school, but at least they had a weekend birthday celebration. It's not their birthday yet, but since both were born right around Christmas we like to make sure we separate one celebration from the other.

On the artsy fartsy front, we made our own house scent pot, we do one every weekend. We put a couple of sliced apples in a pot with an orange or lemon, cinnamon sticks, cloves and water. It really puts a seasonal smell in the house.

We also did a little Christmas prep in the way of food. We love us some country ham, and Cupcake found one on sale. We bought it and prepped it. Big Man will be allowed to smoke the ham for Christmas this year, so he's excited. The soaking began this weekend.

And we found Pops loves him some cranberry sauce with Sunday morning breakfast, so we bought two more bags of cranberries and made another batch of sauce this weekend.

Seven more jars of Sunday morning love, ready to go. We ended the weekend with "Chicken wing Sunday" as is tradition.
We hope everyone weathered the storm as well as we did. Have a safe and happy week.
K&K

Season Of Giving

This is the season of giving so we've always heard. It's been Big Man's experience society as a whole has gotten far more comfortable with taking and expecting something for nothing.

 But we try to give more than we take as a family. This past weekend the local food bank had a fund raiser. We heard they sold hot dogs to raise money, and we thought it would be a nice thing if we donated some pork BBQ. And anytime Big Man gets to play with his smoker, it's a good time.
Cupcake found two pork butts at the store and brought them home, Big Man did a lite dry rub on them, then in to the smoker they went.

Bear Claws to handle the meat

Falling off the bone tender

Pulled and ready to go

One Gallon of home made bourbon BBQ sauce added

The two butts weighed in at 15 pounds, and it smoked for nine hours over maple wood. When the internal temp hit 200, we took the meat off and pulled the bone out, then mixed the sauce. We used the gallon of home made bourbon BBQ sauce Big Man canned up earlier in the summer, this seemed like a special occasion.
We hope it was a hit.
And in the spirit of not wasting food, we did what we do every year we have turkey. We picked the bones as best we could, then we boiled the bones for a couple hours in a large stock pot. We got two gallons of turkey stock and about a gallon bag of meat from the neck and bones. We will make turkey pot pie with the leftover meat, turkey soup with the boiled bone meat, and the stock for whatever we take a notion to use it for. We canned the stock so it should be good to go until we need it.

We ended the weekend with 'Chicken wing Sunday' as always, plus we had a tree to decorate

 And Big Man had a birthday. Cupcake made a German Chocolate cake for the occasion, and found a birthday card that could only have been written for us.

Hope everyone had a great weekend like we did.
K&K