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

Thanksgiving Update

Any holiday that involves food is going to be a big event here at The Acre. Thanksgiving is the Super Bowl of cooking for us. We are truly blessed and that did not escape us this week. We fried a turkey, Cupcake had never had fried turkey before moving in, and she loves it. This year we broke in a new frier pot, since last years fried turkey ended in an "incident".

The bird turned out crispy skin, tender juicy meat. We had all the trappings of the holiday, mashed potatoes from our canned potatoes, home made cranberry sauce, stuffing in cast iron bake ware and from scratch pumpkin pie.

Cupcake used leftover crust dough to make the artsy fartsy leaf designs for the middle.
While we were cooking Thursday, we also took time to winterize the windows. Uncle Billy built the house, and he left plenty of ventilation around the windows, doors and between the logs. I've been four years sealing drafts and still have plenty to find. Yay us!
Back to the winterizing, Cupcake saw "window quilts" on one of her Facebook sites, and I remembered I had several hand made quilts my grandmother made and gave me years ago. These add a old country feel, plus has made a big difference in the temp in the 'great room' where the thermostat is located.

Big Man, being a geek at heart, added a geek touch to the bedroom window.

Being as blessed as we are, we always try to find an older person to fix a plate for, or Cupcake for years would fix an entire meal for the Sheriff's Office. This year we found a new way to give back to the community, and Big Man is working on it while this update is being written. Details on the next posting.
Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday.
K&K

All Food, All The Time

We are truly blessed here at The Acre. We have a roof over our heads and shelves full of food. With our first winter storm bearing down on us this week, all the hard work we put in to stocking the shelves is about to pay off. Let them eat cobbler!

Actually one of the things the big man has recently found is pie crust. It really isn't that hard to make, and the spirit of the old folks who had no idea what a store bought pie crust was lives on through our mixer. This weekend we made a crust and instead of a regular pie, we made mini pies, with cherry pie filling we canned last spring, and applesauce we made a month or so ago, for Speedy. Deadshot prefers hers empty, so we made a few fried crusts for her.

Another treat we have, every weekend, is chicken wings. A while back we posted a question on the wall to see if anyone would want to see how we make what we make. Both regular followers must have responded yes, so we try to give the masses what they demand. Big Man is going to share how he makes his chicken wing sauce. It's not a recipe because we dont use a recipe, but we can show you whats in it, and general amounts if we can.

We start off with two tablespoons of butter, melt it in a pot, then we add about a half bottle of Crystal hot sauce and about a quarter bottle of Tabasco Buffalo sauce. Then its a dash of this and a dab of that. Paprika, parsley, garlic powder, Slap Ya Mama, poultry seasoning. The we add some liquid stuff, just a splash of A-1, lemon juice, red wine vinegar, liquid smoke. We also used a hand full of fresh herbs from Cupcake's herb garden that we moved in doors this fall. It's really adding a nice homy scent to the living room, and fresh herbs year round rocks out loud.

Fresh Rosemary, basil and oregano, bruised then toss it in the pot. We finish off with two secret ingredients (at least they were, probably still will be) which is bourbon and honey. Actually we ran out of bourbon last Sunday and we had to substitute Scotch this weekend. Our usual flavor is Red Stag from Jimmy Beam. The second secret is honey. Our sauce has a sweet taste when you first bite the wing, then the heat hits for the finish. We are ruined on anyone elses wings/sauce we fear.

As for the wings themselves, we use Perdue, and cut them in half prior to cooking. We let them warm to room temp, then drop them in a deep frier at 375* for 27 minutes. This makes them crispy without drying the wing out. Dump the wings in the bowl with a lid, pour the sauce over the wings, do the Elvis 'Hippie Hippie Shake', uncover and enjoy.

Our last treat of the weekend was home made caramel. Big man does not like caramel, but he nearly ate the whole jar of this batch. Caramel chunks stick in your teeth and take forever to chew, but this way of making the caramel gives it the consistency of a thick pudding, and you just cant beat it on a fresh sliced apple.

So that was our weekend. This week is geared toward Thanksgiving, and we have a long list of things to be thankful for this year. We hope everyone is ready for the first storm of the year, and look forward to fried turkey updates in a few days.
K&K

One Week Till Turkey Day

This past week was another slow one. I got to smoke a couple of meals with the smoker, deer proofed the fruit trees in the garden and baked a cobbler for a neighbor one night.

Speedy killed another buck, but he donated that one to a family who has yet to get any deer meat in the freezer, like we said, he's a good egg.
One of the meals I smoked up was deer backstrap wrapped in bacon. Backstrap is not a very thick piece of meat, so it only took a couple hours of slow smoking to bring it up to temp, but it sure did taste good when I did.

Backstrap and bacon before

End result, mighty tasty

Smoked chicken with a three day rub

Peach and Pear cobbler

We tried a new thing this week, home made pie crust. With the leftover smoked chicken picked off the bone, we were looking for something new to do with the meat. Big man thought, chicken pot pie. We searched the usual suspect pages for a recipe for pie crust, and all the pages called for "two pre-made pie shells. That just wont do for The Acre.
Big man experimented with flour and butter until he hit on a mix that turned out right. It rolled out right, and baked up right. Once again, this was far better than store bought and we look forward to making pumpkin pie with our new found pie crust mixture. The smoked chicken pot pie will be a new addition to The Acre.

No awards for presentation, but no leftovers either

Deer proofing the fruit trees came a little late for this one

This is a pear tree we planted in the front yard for future shade. I never imagined a buck would get that close to the house, especially with two highly trained killers lurking behind each window and door. I was wrong. I expect this tree will be dead as a hammer next spring.  We have six more inside the fenced in garden, and the fence is electric. I thought this would keep deer out, since it has kept the garden safe the past four years. This year do to a lack of acorns, the deer are bold and unpredictable, and have been in the garden all fall going after the corn stalks we didnt use for decoration.
I didnt want the fruit trees in there to end up like the pear tree out front, so I rigged up a quick fix.

The white string is really electric fence wire, and the fence is on. Any buck wanting to scrape our fruit trees is gonna get a shocking experience. I guess we will just have to keep the ones with horns hanging on the wall of the garage?

2012 bow kill in a place of honor

We hope to have a weekend update, if nothing else, we will share chicken wing Sunday.
K&K

Holiday Prep

This week was a slow one until the weekend hit. Not a lot going on and there is only so many ways to flesh out being and shack bitch.  Friday was my cleaning day and  I decided to smoke a rack of ribs while I was cleaning.

Brown mustard and brown sugar rub before

Fall off the bone tender at the end

We are still getting fresh collard greens from our garden so I picked a batch to go with the ribs. Add a pot of my home made baked beans and we had a pretty darn good start to the weekend.
Saturday was a warm day so we took advantage and hung the Christmas lights. I remember as  lad that we had the old school lights with the big bulbs, Cupcake and I found just such lights a couple years ago, and these are the ones we use. They show up really well from the roadway, as we live about a quarter mile off the hard road. We don't turn them on until dark on Thanksgiving night, but it's good to have them up before it gets crazy cold. Cold does not bother me at all, but Cupcake likes to help and I think of her comfort.
Cupcake also wanted to try making from scratch cranberry sauce. We bought a couple bags of berries and gave it a whirl. We know everyone gets tired of hearing it's better than store bought, but this really is. Of course we canned a few jars after we got it made, it's how we do at The Acre.

Two bags of store bought cranberries, orange juice and water

Cooked down, then it's just like making jelly or pie filling

Never buy store bought again

We let Pops try a bit before Sunday breakfast, and he liked it so well we decided to finish the jar with breakfast.
And speaking of breakfast, Sunday was a real treat thanks to Deadshot. I fried up one of the tenderloins from her first deer kill, and made tenderloin gravy. It was a big hit.

Tenderloin and butter, onions and butter

The skillets on the left are the egg skillets. Pop and I like fried onions in our breakfast eggs, while cupcake is an over easy kind of chick.
After breakfast, Deadshot wanted to do some cooking. She found a recipe for a meatball casserole she wanted to try, so the girls had some mommy/daughter time while I deer proofed our fruit trees. Deadshot is carrying on the cast iron skillet cooking tradition.

Deadshot rocking the cast iron skillet

Three words:  Fab  You Less!!

It was a really good meal, not only can she hunt with the big boys, but she can rattle a pot and pan like a champ too.
Hope everyone has a great week.
K&K