Baby It's Cold Outside

No, we're not nuts. We discovered "Frosty Paws" ice cream for fraidy mutt. She's always been a scraps after dinner kind of mutt, but in the evenings we have been on the back porch with an ice cream for ourselves. Now she can enjoy the shade and quiet with us.

We also enjoy watching the new chicks peck around and chase bugs. Our Maran birds are two different colors, some are black and speckled while some are gray and speckled. We look forward to having a little variety in the coop soon.

"The twins" as we now call them stop by to check out the back porch goings on most evenings. We are pretty sure they are male/female twins. We hope so anyway.

We need some quiet time in the evenings, because we've been harvesting garden goodies every day.

And we've started Cupcake a dried pepper string to decorate/hold our peppers

Pickle production is in full swing. We put away 18 pints one afternoon, mostly dill, but we've started getting the yellow cucumbers on a regular basis, that means "them yellow pickles." A big shout out to Pops for supplying us with two cases of jars just prior.

First we wash

Slice and lime in our crock

Next day, rinse again

Bottle and bath

We also got a request for some of our Christmas pickles that we mentioned last week. We let our cucumbers get extra big before we picked them, then did another batch. This week we went green to go with last week's red.

Slice and de seed

Dyed and soaked

In jar with syrup, soak overnight

Water bath. Three day process

We've been getting creative with our garden bounty. Of course we have fried green tomatoes and fried squash. We've been tinkering with fried dill pickles to use up the extra batter we have when we fry veggies. They are not up to standard just yet, but we have plenty of time to practice.

We also made a batch of salsa. There is nothing like taking vegetables straight from the vine and putting them in the pot to make a dish.

We even used fresh basil from Cupcake's herb garden on the deck boxes. We got six pints of salsa from this batch, and we're pretty sure we will be making more. When the zombies come we will still be able to enjoy chips while the hoards pass by.
We made our first attempt at a family recipe for brown sugar pie. Big Man's grandmother made brown sugar pies, and it seems they were gooey. This one had more of the consistency of our buttermilk pie. We may need to tinker with this one a bit more before we unleash it on the family reunion.

Cupcake had to work late Friday, so we stayed in and made another pizza.

Between working in the garden and making pickles, we still found time for a couple of projects. We made another batch of mint toothpaste, that should last us another three months or so. We also made another gallon of laundry detergent.

And while we were cutting mint, we cut enough for another round of lye soap. We either used or gave away our last batch.

Nineteen new bars of mint soap

We ended the week with wings.
K&K

Christmas in July

This week it was a little warm, so we thought we would bring a little Christmas to July. This is the first week we've gone with no rain at all in quite some time, then it got hot. Our garden and pumpkin patch are holding their own so far. Joys of gardening, it's a shame more people don't know the feeling.

We start the pictures this week with Christmas pickles. The cucumbers have been coming in every day so we are trying to get creative with how we use them. Cupcake found this recipe and we gave it a go. We are excited about this one.

Straight from the garden to the kitchen

Sliced and seeded

Simmer in sauce

Then we add the "magic"

Time to make the syrup

Then they soak for one day in the jars

These pickles took all weekend to make. They are a little more labor intensive than the ones we usually make, but we're not afraid to try new things. We started by quartering the cucumbers length wise, then use a spoon to cut the seeds out of the middle. Once the cucumbers are seeded, we simmered them in a brine of water and alum. While the cucumbers were simmering, we made the syrup with water, sugar and red hots candy. We packed the cucumbers in jars and poured the syrup over the cucumbers and let them sit for twenty four hours. After a day, we sealed them up and hot bath canned the pickles along with a few extras.

Sliced pears

Leftover syrup put to good use

We had about one quart of syrup left over from the pickles, and it tasted so good we hated to waste it. Cupcake hit on the idea of canning pears in the syrup for an extra winter treat. We picked up about a half dozen pears and sliced them. We hot packed them in the syrup then water bath canned them along with the pickles. Now all we have to do is wait until Christmas to eat them.
Like we said, the cucumbers have been coming in every day, this is our best year for cucumbers since we started a garden.

This is only half, the yellow cucumbers have not started yet

We have a volunteer gourd vine that came up at the wood pile, we are letting it run because gourds are fun to decorate with in the fall.

And Cupcake's Tennessee sweet potato vines have started producing fruit.

We never get tired of having fresh veggies on hand every day. It counter balances the heat.

One great thing about fresh veggies is meal time. We enjoy BLT biscuits every morning during the summer.

And we use the veggies in dinner dishes as well. Cupcake made a macaroni salad Saturday night that was the best one she's ever made. She really knocked this one out of the park.

And since Dude's Drive In was closed this week, we smoked a whole pig leg for dinner.

And our last picture this week is Nephew Henry. He got to spend the night with Pops Friday night, so that means Saturday morning pancakes. Little Henry put a hurt on some chow.

We ended the week with wings.
K&K

Kraut Pickles

Another hot week here at The Acre. We had a few passing thunderstorms that gave us about an inch of rain on the garden and pumpkin patch, so we will put up with the heat. We did some preventive spraying on the pumpkin patch and squash. We mixed up a few tablespoons of baking soda in a gallon of water and sprayed everything down. This keeps the PH levels high enough to defeat the blight, which has plagued The Acre ever since we started planting a garden. So far so good. We really like fried squash, so fingers crossed.
We start off this week with  the food pictures. And how better to start than steak? These are from the whole sirloin we cut ourselves. We did packs of two, then cut the two in half for a total of four steaks at prep time. This week we hit the cast iron skillet just right so we had some smoke rolling off of the pan before we dropped the steaks. We got a good crust on the outside and the inside we could still cut with a fork.

We had another boil this week. Pops is a big fan of the boil, and we kind of like it ourselves.

We've been getting fresh veggies from the garden, so we always have fresh food on the table. This one is a summer time favorite. Cucumbers and onions in vinegar sauce. We slice them up and let the cool in the fridge until dinner time. You just can't beat this one.

We also have a fresh salad every day for lunch. Lettuce, tomatoes and onions straight from the garden. You'd think we would be healthy?
Our last food related item this week is prep for this coming weekend. Everyone knows we go to Dude's Drive In every Saturday night for a burger and fries. Every week except one, the third week of July. That's the week Dude's gives everyone a vacation while they spruce up the joint. That means fresh french fry oil, but it also means we have to do something different for dinner on Saturday night. We thought this would be an excellent time to smoke the whole pig leg we picked up a few weeks ago. We've had it in the freezer, so we took it out for thawing. We will be good to go by next Saturday.

A couple of projects this week were also food related. Earlier in the week, we picked a few heads of cabbage from the garden to make kraut. We had to cover the cabbage because the girls mow down the heads if we don't. The funny thing is that everywhere we read about keeping chickens, one of the things we see is give the chickens a head of cabbage to keep them fed and occupied. We bought a couple of heads at the local markets, but the girls will not touch them. We had two rot, untouched. So we figured chickens didn't eat cabbage. Then we had a whole row of cabbage last year that got mowed down as soon as the heads started to form. Our only guess is the birds know something we don't about store bought cabbage?

We chopped them up and got our crock up and running. Six weeks from now we look forward to sharing some jars of kraut with our loyal followers.

Second item this week is pickles. Our cucumber plants are running wild and we pick three or four new ones each day. After we get a "mess" we make a batch of pickles. Looks like we will be headed to town for more wide mouth pint jars very soon.

We have already stocked up on jar lids, for just such an emergency.

Our last project for the week is berries. We've been picking all our berries as they come in. We freeze the handful here, handful there until we get enough for a batch. This weekend we had enough for two rounds of jelly making.

One day's worth of work equals fourteen jars of jelly and a few more jars of dill pickles. Not too shabby for an old couple.

Our last picture this week is from a guest photographer, our pal Steph. She took a break from all things bachelorette to enjoy a glass of foxgrape wine on her front porch this week. We can't wait to make more this year.

We ended the week with wings.
K&K