Reunion '17

We ended this week with our family reunion. We had a big turnout but we missed our cousins Bill and Francis. Cupcake says it didn't end with the police breaking up a fight or anyone going to jail, so it's hands down better than the Price reunions she's attended.

This year we made a smoked pulled pork BBQ and Cupcake made deviled eggs.

Homemade BBQ sauce we canned last year

And a cheesecake for dessert. We used chocolate graham crackers for the crust this time.

And a crowd favorite, buttermilk pie

We also helped Pop out with smoking a ham while we were smoking the pork shoulder. Everything was a big hit, there was nothing leftover to bring home.
Prior to the weekend we did usual stuff around The Acre.
We picked our first tomatoes from the garden and we put them to good use. Bacon and tomato biscuits for breakfast.

We would have more ripe tomatoes, but someone enjoys fried green tomatoes.

We had a meal with collard greens from the garden

And we've started getting onions the size of a baseball. We've never raised onions this large before.

This one went to breakfast eggs

And we thinned out our early beets to let the others grow bigger. We picked just enough for two and a half quarts of pickled beets. We changed up the recipe this year and used onions (red, from the garden and huge) and our first jalapeño peppers.

Our basil is starting to come in, just in time for the tomatoes and peppers

We have a rouge guinea bird out in the fruit orchard who is sitting on a nest. She has been calling to the other birds and we believe they are trying to bring the littles out of the weeds.

Our broody chickens have hatched all but one guinea egg, so we have twenty three keets and one on the way. We decided to keep fifteen of them and the last nine to hatch we are going to gift to our neighbor. They had guineas last year, but the predators killed off all but two of their birds.
These like to crawl into the feeder and sleep.

And we have hummingbirds visiting the front porch every day, another welcome addition to The Acre.

We were too stuffed from the reunion for wings this week, so we grabbed a nap instead.
K&K

More Jelly More Gem Corn

We were mostly garden oriented this week. The weather was calling for rain every day and we wanted to get it all tilled up and weeded before it started raining. To start things off, we picked another gallon of blackheart cherries and made one more batch of jelly.

We did manage to get it all done and we planted another row of beets and corn. We have eaten or given away almost all of our pickled beets so we will be needing a lot of beets to fill the shelves back up.

Early beets

Early corn

Gem corn seeds for planting

Future pickles

Future salsa/skettie sauce/soup/chili/pizza sauce

Future Jam

Current obsession

Red raspberries are almost here

And speaking of blueberries, after our first picking from the small ones a couple of weeks ago, our more mature bushes are starting to come in. We pick a small cup full every day to keep the squirrels from stealing them. This Saturday we put a cup to use in our pancakes.

Fresh from the bush to the batter? Yes please.
On the food related note, we wanted to show off our day to day breakfast. Cupcake goes to work early while Lawman starts his day by whipping up scratch made buttermilk biscuits and bacon. Cupcake takes a break and we sit down to a good breakfast.

Then Cupcake goes back to keeping the big bucks flowing to keep Lawman in the lifestyle he's grown accustomed to. Lawman goes on to do the four or five loads of laundry, garden work and prep for a five star style dinner.
Like we had on Thor's red meat offering day. We did "Surf and Turf". It was special because Lawman fixed scallops. Cupcake said "the outlaw" made her scallops one time and she thought they were disgusting. After she tried one of Lawman's scallops, we agreed that Steve just don't know how to cook. They were a big hit, and we got to use up the leftover shrimp from the boil in a shrimp cocktail.

The "surf" part was a huge hit

Cupcake's favorite greens, fried kale

When it did start raining this week, Lawman got caught up on some of his long term prep work by making two pounds of homemade butter.

It goes really well on breakfast biscuits, or scratch made dinner rolls.

We ended the week by going to see the new "Wonder Woman" movie and then returning home for wings.
K&K

The Adventures of Captain Jelly and Spatula Girl

This was the week we had been waiting for. The cherries came in and Cupcake was on vacation all week. We picked around ten pounds of blackheart cherries from Pop's house, and a few more sour cherries and red cherries from our tree.

This should hold us a while

As we were making the jelly, Cupcake would wash the jars and when we got to the end of the batch, she would take a spatula and scrape the rest of the jelly out of the pot and in to the jar. Lawman was was joking around that "Captain Jelly and his side kick Spatula girl" would make a great comic. We will be reaching out to producers with the idea.
And as luck would have it, blueberries came in at the same time. Remember when we posted a few weeks ago that this was the first year for the blueberry bushes and we didn't think they would amount to much this year? We do. We picked enough for one batch of jelly.

Strawberries are coming back in as well.

We did a little cooking this week. Cupcake found a recipe for a sesame chicken salad we wanted o try.

Roasting sesame seeds and almonds

And we found a jalapeno pepper quiche recipe. It turned out really well and we will be making this again soon.

Homemade pie crust. Always homemade

Anything with bacon is gonna be good

As we do most times, we forgot to take a picture of the finished product before we cut in to it and chowed down. We did post a picture on Cupcake's Face Place wall, so if you're interested in the finished product, check her page out.
On Thor's red meat offering day, we had a skillet full of fried squash, scalded lettuce straight from the garden, and dinner rolls.

And grill top smores for dessert.

Cupcake made another round of homemade sausage.

Lawman made another batch of laundry detergent

Our new girls are making themselves at home in the woods near the coop.

Our first batch of guinea birds hatched this week. We still have a dozen or so eggs that are a week behind this batch.

And last for the week was a well checkup. We have been waiting for a while to get the well company back out to The Acre to raise the pump up a few feet, this week they showed up. And it's a good thing they did show up. We found the grout around the well had settled and there was a huge hole along the side of the pump. They said there must have been an air pocket that collapsed. Anyway, they are coming next week to fill in the hole and the pump has been raised up.

We ended the week with wings.
K&K