Replacement Dish

This week, Cupcake found a holiday dish that Crazy Granny had stolen from her in her previous life. Not borrowed and failed to return, we're talking using a key to come in while everyone is gone, and taking stuff. Lawman says there's a name for people like that. Anyway, we found a new one so we replaced the stolen item.

And while we're on the topic of "The Outlaws", lawman changed the oil in Cupcake's truck this week. We point this out because daddy outlaw was too sorry to change the oil for Cupcake in her previous life. We will continue to drive the point home each time we do it our ourselves.

Jake took to the tree stand one evening and stuck a seven point buck. Kattie Grace and her feller helped him round it up and work it up. There was tenderloin gravy for breakfast this past Sunday.
It's our tradition.

Kattie Grace also decorated a pumpkin this week. We added it to the fireplace decorations.

We received our snow blower this week. We shopped around quite a bit, and settled on one from Sam's Club. We had it delivered to the house.

It appears the crate was tipped on it's side or left upside down, because the oil had drained out of the machine.

We also found some graffiti on the crate. We're curious for the back story to who these people may have been.

But after we got the case opened, we assembled the blower and added more oil. It fired up right away, so we're ready for anything mother nature can throw our way this year.

We got a little white on the ground this week, but not quite enough to use the new blower.

We had to make a fresh batch of laundry detergent this week.

And the one food related item was chocolate cake. Cupcake wanted to make sure that Lawman hadn't lost his touch, and boiled custard season is fast approaching. We made a trial run, and it turned out just like we remembered. Nothing from a box here, it's all from scratch.

We ended the week with wings.
K&K

Nobody needs an AR-15

That's what all the sheeple on Facebook say. We beg to differ the point. Living out in BFE as we do, we are at least thirty minutes away from government agencies assistance (that is, if they come a runnin). Lawman says a five minute fight waiting for backup is an eternity, so we plan on making any encounter with people who mean us harm a short one. We are prepared for a fight, but we're not out looking for one. We will however, make it a short fight should one come looking for us.
Our two or three followers know we've lost over forty chickens this summer to a bobcat. That's forty eggs a day we will not be gathering this winter, so our egg business will take a hit until next fall when we can try to raise another batch of chicks to egg producers. To protect the birds we have left, the bobcat had to go. This week his number came up. Lawman reached out and touched the bobcat with his big scary M4 style AR-15. One shot, one kill. So for all those who foo foo and spew the MSNBC horse shit line that nobody hunts with an AR-15, we say "nuts".

No chicken dinner for you

And speaking of people who mean us harm/have done us harm, there was an "Uncle Billy" sighting this week. We spotted the great liar heading down Rt. 8 with a load of house logs. So if anyone out there knows of a person who's building a log home in the Riner/Floyd area, pass along a message for us?

There's a new victim out there somewhere. Welcome to the club, we meet on Tuesdays.
The rest of our week was almost all food related except for Kattie Grace and her feller. They carved a couple of pumpkins this week. That ranks as our only project.

We did try a new meal this week. Beef ribs. We've smoked pork ribs for a few years now, but we could never find any beef ribs that we wanted to try. We found a pack of beef ribs at the Christiansburg Wade's that looked pretty beefy. Last week we treated the ribs and let them sit in the fridge until Thor's Day, when we made our red meat offerings to the God of Thunder.

Nothing like a wood smoker on a frosty morning

There were no leftovers

We made a batch of apple butter last week with apples from our tree in the yard. When we make apple butter, Cupcake makes fried apple pies. Lawman made a pie crust, and Cupcake took it from there.

And the end of the month is always the crazy time for Cupcake at work. We don't usually leave the house the last three or four days of the month, this caused us to miss a dress up Halloween party and our Friday night out on the town. We stayed in and made a pizza from scratch. Pappa John can kiss our behinds. We don't understand why everyone wouldn't want to make their own pizza.

Pizza crust, from scratch of course

Home made pizza sauce from the garden

Pepperoni, mushroom and onion

Brush the crust with olive oil

There were no leftovers

We are gearing up to dig our potatoes and plow under the garden and pumpkin patch next week, and we have tickets to the IMAX opening of "Dr. Strange" so that's happening.
We ended this week with wings.
K&K

All Food This Week

This weeks pictures are all about food. Nothing much went on outside of the house this week. We had a visit from "The Beamer" who drove down from Cincinnati to break bread with us and get his visit on with the local peeps. We feel his pain on trying to get to see everyone on a short visit, and were honored he found time for us. We tried to make it worth his while.
Starting off we smoked a brisket.

We smoked a whole brisket and a pork shoulder. We promised "Dr. Puddin" a pork BBQ after the colonoscopy, and we like to do what we say we will do, so that happened too.

And we were itching to try one of our fresh sweet potatoes. We wrapped it up in foil and baked it for almost three hours. It was an awful big potato.

Then we made a mac-n-cheese. And not "crazy granny" mac-n-cheese from the frozen food section of Wal-Mart and add cheese to it, no sir. All from scratch is how we roll.

Then a skillet of corn bread, and not the "Jiffy" from a box. Scratch

Buttermilk pie for dessert.

We had a big wind come through Friday and Saturday, that blew most of the apples off of our tree below the big deck. We picked up a bucket full and Cupcake made her soon to be world famous apple sauce. It made six pints of apple sauce, and we had enough for a second cook. We made apple butter with the leftover apples.

And Sunday morning, Cupcake made mention that we always sign off with wings on Sunday evening, but we hardly ever mention our Sunday morning breakfast.

Scratch made biscuits

Sausage gravy

Scrambled eggs, brisket, onion and peppers

And we did prep for next week's Thor's day red meat offerings. We found a large package of beef ribs at Wade's last week. We peeled the membrane off the back of the ribs before we rubbed it down and let it set until Thor's Day.

The ribs are resting in the fridge, tune in next week for smoking results.
We ended the week with wings.
K&K

Just When I Think I'm Out

Another short update from The Acre this week. Cupcake made her first week long business trip for her employer. She traveled to New England and saw the sights while Lawman stayed behind and held down the fort. Toward the end of the week Cupcake had an option to fly into Baltimore or wait around a couple of different airports for eight hours to fly in to Roanoke. Since Lawman knows the area around BWI, we decided to make a mini getaway out of the tail end of her journey.

And we stayed at a new hotel. At least it was new to us. Lawman worked the area at the tail end of his career, and the area was a big muddy field when he had the post. Something was going to be built there, now we know what.

While Lawman was waiting for Cupcake's plane to land, he caught up with a few of his pals from Charm City. When you're in town for a few hours you just can't get around to everyone you want to so maybe if the company keeps sending Cupcake around the country, we can get back up and see a few more folks next time.

Rex "Bad Dewd" Snider and Jason Parrotte Army Ranger extraordinaire

Steve Leitess, lawyer and financial adviser extraordinaire

Roland Gene Perry AKA "The Guru" Lawman's FTO and all around hero

Senorita Selfie

The "scrap heap gang"

Cupcake took a few snaps up North

New England was beautiful this time of year, and the weather had not turned too cold yet, so it was a perfect time to be there.
Prior to Cupcake leaving, we started our fall/winter meat smoking. We smoked a roaster chicken.

It's the perfect time to start smoking meat, we had our first frost of the fall this week. Not a heavy frost, but it still counts.

And after the trip was over we got back to The Acre, unpacked and did a quick dig of our sweet potatoes. We dug one hill a few weeks ago and found we had potatoes, so we left the rest. We could not believe the size of the sweet potatoes we dug. We've never seen any this large. Ever.

We read up on how to care for our new crop, and learned the longer sweet potatoes cure, the sweeter they become. So we rigged up a table with chicken wire so they could air out and cure.

We are trying to stop ourselves from cooking them. It's not easy.
We ended the week with wings.
K&K