Snowed Inn

We were snowed in this week at The Acre. The chirruns were out of school all week, and Cupcake worked from home most of the week. We were going to post a bunch of pictures of the snow, but we figure everyone who reads this had snow outside their window too, so we skipped straight to the food.
First, we believe there is a local elected politician with a fridge full of this particular item.

But that is only speculation.
First off this week, Big Man made from scratch blueberry muffins. Cupcake picked up a package of mix in the grocery store, and it was met with a big "Aww hell no!!" 

And while we had blueberries out, there was blueberry pancakes on Saturday.

Made with our fresh eggs

Then there was a new item this week, from scratch French bread. It was simple, and it sure went good with a jar of deer chili we warmed up one night.

We made a second loaf to go with our home made onion soup.

There was some snacking this week as well. We had our go to snack, jalapeno jelly and cream cheese on crackers.

And Cupcake had some blue cheese to snack on

Then there was our little ray of sunshine, who wanted to make another batch of her chocolate strawberries.

Not everyone was happy about being snowed in. Fraidy Mutt got a little cabin fever, so we suited up and took her for a walk Saturday, she was starting to look a little depressed.

We're pretty sure that if she had thumbs, she would be on the phone to Sarah McLachlan, you know, because she's abused and all.
We ended the week with chicken wings, like we are prone to do.
K&K

I'm Cupid, Stupid

That is Cupcake's favorite line from Season 3 of Arrow so far

This week, there was something all new at The Acre. Cupcake ate a bunch of clams. Big Man is always on the hunt for cooking ideas, because he has free time like that. Cupcake has one rule, no seafood. But while playing shack bitch two weeks ago, he found clams on sale and could not pass up a bargain. Big Man figured he would make a pot of clam chowder (CHOWDAH!!) and he could eat it for lunch while Cupcake was at work, and maybe even can a few pints for lunch down the road. Unbeknownst to him, it is unsafe to can seafood, even in a pressure canner. So, there's that.
Then, magic happened. Cupcake came home from work and smelled the chowder (CHOWDAH!!) cooking. She tried it, and she liked it. She requested we have it for dinner the next night, and we did. So many new things being tried. Giggity.

The next search lead Big Man to pound cake. He had never made a pound cake before, and we do not have a round pan, so it turned out a sheet pound cake. This one was a cream cheese pound cake. It wasn't bad, but it did not turn out well enough we would feel comfortable with gifting one. More work is needed.

Going with the something new theme, Cupcake found a recipe for Valentines Day "crack". It's pretzel and nut brittle, and it sure was good.

And in celebration of the holiday, Kattie Grace wanted to make chocolate covered strawberries. She did all the work, and they lasted for about two hours after she was done. She's a chip off the cooking block.

We made pizza Thursday night, two cheese pizzas kept us going through the night.

And lastly, an update on our celery stalks. The first one is doing so well, we started a second one.

You can see a candle behind the soon to be chicken wing Sunday. The chirruns bought Cupcake a candle for Valentines Day.

Hope everyone had a great weekend. See y'all back here next time.
K&K

We May Have a Problem

This week, we started around 30 new tomato plants. We are over 60 now, all different types of tomatoes. We may have some issues?
We bought a new starter kit, and put it to use. This week we started Mr. Stripeys, some more Cherokee Purples. New this year, Tangerine tomatoes and something called "Lightning" tomatoes. Cupcake is the research specialist around The Acre, and she has been steady ordering seeds since the first of the year. We are soooo ready for spring.

Bear paws and tiny seeds make for a challenge

Future jars of tomatoes, just wait and see

In other spring related news, we started a stalk of celery. We belong to more farming and gardening sites on Facebook than we have on our friends lists, we saw this on one of them a few weeks ago. We eat celery just about every day, and we hate to waste things, so.

Two days, see the tiny green sprout in the middle?

Almost a week, you can see the sprout is bigger, and the root below

According to the article we read, when it takes off, we can plant it in a flower pot and cut off celery as we need it. That appeals to us. We will start another one soon, and update down the road.
Speaking of not wasting things, our candle was finished just in time for this update.

Big Man wants to call it "Confederate Candle". Not because we are fans of the confederacy, but we think we can go head to head with Yankee Candle. No harm in dreaming.
There was a couple of food related items to mention this week. First, we used another jar of our home made mustard. Big Man fried up some rib eye steak slices for cheese steak subs one night, and we used the mustard on them.

Next, Big Man got back to smoking some meat. There has been a couple weeks gone by since he fired up Joe, so we thawed out a slab of ribs and smoked them up on Thor's Day.  An added treat for Cupcake? Down under bread. We had a few oranges left over from marmalade fixings, so we used fresh squeezed juice in the recipe. We don't know why more people don't make their own bread.

That's fresh

Still working on presentation

Fall off the bone rib meat, now that's good eatin right there.
We ended the weekend with wings, and some of our combat size wing sauce.
K&K

Cream Pies, The Pink, and The Stink

We figured the title alone would bring in the pervs on our friends list. Our attempt to boost readership is now over.
But in fact, we did have made from scratch cream pies, and home made deodorant to show off this past week.  Lets get to it.

First, we made our own deodorant this week. Not because we've gone full blown hippie, but it seemed simple to do, and we have a hard enough time remembering what we're doing without smearing aluminum on our body to hasten along mental issues.
We found all the ingredients on Amazon, and ordered up a batch. The process is really simple, and first reports are it works just fine. Cupcake went with a lime flavor, Big Man went orange. So if you smell a fruit salad pass you in Tractor Supply, it was probably us.

Bees wax, Shea butter, talc, coconut oil and essential oils for scent

Melt the oil, add the talc and smell good. All there is to it

The "stink" part

We used cast iron to melt down the bees wax and coconut oil, we figured that would keep any Teflon transfer issues at bay, since we're trying to avoid that in store bought. But we did use a couple of store bought containers. While it was still warm in the pan, we poured it in to the container then refrigerated them until they set up firm. We had just a little dab left over, which you can see in the background. It melts on the body and soaks in when applied, so there is no fuss, no muss.
Reviews on line say it takes a while to work, hopefully by garden season, we will be fruity all the time.
Speaking of oranges, Big Man made another cooking of orange marmalade this week. Working smarter instead of harder, he managed to cut about an hour off the cook time. Last time he boiled the peels, then scraped the pith off with a spoon. The boiling took about an hour, then there was cooling time involved. This time he just used a fish filet knife that he sharpened to a fine edge, and sliced the pith off like a yellow perch skin. We are in business.

Super sharp knife works wonders

Fresh squeeze juice, makes a real difference

Cook it down

Three more pints, and a little to boot for snacking

In the spirit of not wasting anything around The Acre, we made our own candle this week. We have several wax melting scent doohickeys around the house. Cupcake struck on the idea this week of rather than throwing the wax away, use the wax to make our own candles. We save all the strings off of the Elliston flour we buy, and we have a drawer full of around fifty of them saved up. We used one for the wick, and as we empty old wax, we pour it into a mason jar. We will be sure to post the end result when we get it full.

The "pink" part of our title

And we mentioned last week we have become "regulars" at Dudes Drive In. The only draw back we have on that is the ketchup packets that come with our order. We thought "why not take our own?" And since we make our own ketchup, we did just that.

We put this jar in the Big Blue Bus, and keep it on hand for dipping. It was food porn at it's best this week.
And on to food, it was a good week there, too.
Sunday, we had another deer backstrap meal. We seared up the meat in cast iron, then let it set overnight to rest.

 Big Man made a chicken pot pie. Instead of using soup for his gravy, he went old school and made scratch gravy with our home made turkey broth, and of course, home made pie crust.

Haters still don't believe we make our own pie crust

You can't get results like this with store bought crust

Then there was "Super Bowl Sunday". We would rather drink turpentine and pee on a brush fire, than watch football, but we sure ate like we were having a football party. Cupcake did the honors Sunday, first with bacon/bean soup.

Cooking down our carrots, celery and onions

Time to slow cook

And then, she made from scratch, Little Debbie oatmeal cream pies (see what we did there with the title now? Pervs) They taste exactly like the store bought pies, only no annoying plastic wrap to fight off before eating them.

Little Debbie? Never again

Cream in our cream pie

Makes you want to slap crazy granny

 And then moved on to making a combat batch of chicken wing sauce.

You can see the anger, can't you?

We made enough for this weeks wings, and six more quarts that we canned. If anyone is wondering, it makes you cough, brings a tear to your eye, and we would bath in it, if we had a bath tub in the house, but we don't, so there's that.
Next week, we will be sharing tomato sprouts and planting fresh herbs and whatnot.  See y'all then.
K&K