Monthly Archives: September 2007

Animals and Nature, Cooking, Knitting

Happy Birthday My Little Redhead

Posted on by Jean

From this (Aggie is on your left):

to this:

in two years.  I took this picture on Aggie’s 2nd birthday (Saturday).  Happy birthday my sweet girl.  To celebrate I bought Aggie a gift!  Wasn’t that nice of me?  She’s always wanted a skein winder that she didn’t have to clamp down!  Who knew?!

What better way to try it out than with the yarn Kim (Woolen Rabbit) gave to me over Labor Day weekend. 

Finished the socks I started on Labor Day from Regia.  I have to say that the mismatched look drives me nuts.  Someone in the family is definitely getting these socks.

The color got me thinking of blueberries and blueberries got me thinking of one of my favorite treats:

Blueberry scones and a cuppa tea.  Must be the Scottish blood roaring through my veins.  I’ve made them enough to have been able to tweak the recipe a bit from various recipes I’ve found in books and on the web.  I like a denser, not so bready scone with an almost crunchy outside.  This was my latest try and so far it’s our favorite.

Scottish Lamb’s Blueberry Scones –

  • 2 1/2 c flour
  • 1/3 c sugar
  • pinch of salt
  • 1 TBS baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • fresh nutmeg (I grate about a tsp worth if you’re using the already grated stuff, I’d double it)
  • 1 TBS grated lemon rind

Preheat oven to 400F.  Mix above ingredients in a bowl with a whisk until well blended.  Then cut in:

  • 1 stick unsalted butter (1/2 cup) – do NOT use margarine

Until it looks like cornmeal.  I usually stick the whole bowl back in the freezer (or at least the fridge if there’s no room in the freezer) for about a half an hour before continuing so that the butter gets nice and cold again.

Then add about a pint of fresh blueberries (you can use frozen but don’t defrost them so they won’t turn the dough blue).  Really, you have a lot of choices at this point.  Try raisins, craisins, nuts, cranberries, etc.  You really can’t go wrong.  My favorite is blueberries or raspberries though.

Beat together:

  • 1 egg
  • 3/4 cup milk (buttermilk will make the crumb softer and lighter if you’d like to try it)

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix with a spoonula until it comes together into a ball.  Dump onto a floured surface and gently knead just until it is combined well (you have to do this carefully with berries so you don’t crush them).  Flatten out into a disk about an inch thick and cut like a cake into wedges.  Place on a sheet pan and brush with either milk or an egg wash.  Sprinkle with sugar and bake at 400 for about 20 min or until golden.  Best when fresh out of the oven. Brèagha (Gaelic for Beautiful)

Cooking, Family, Friends, Knitting

Nothin’ Says Fall like FOOTBALL!!

Posted on by Jean

Black Knights!!  Hooah!

I wish you could feel the excitement here today.  Tomorrow is a special day.   The first home football game of the season and guess who has tickets?!  We are SO excited we can’t stand it.  Best news… we live less than a mile from the stadium so we can walk and not suffer all the traffic.  We went today and bought all the fun stuff for the game.  Evidently football is HUGE here.  Dan even had to bring home one of the office cars with the sirens and lights so that he can get through traffic if he has a duty call.

Dan laughed and said we have a pretty good chance at being at a game when Army wins because they’re playing Rhode Island tomorrow (please, if you’re a Rhode Island fan…  yell at Dan.  He said it, not me).  Next one that we have tickets to is against Rutgers.  He suspects we’ll lose big time.  Still fun to go though.

Kim blogged today about the little things I brought her last weekend and I felt like a schmo for not sharing what she gave me.  I’m sure you all know she’s been working hard to get ready for the fair but she let me dig into her bag of goodies and pick a skein.  This colorway is called Boysenberry.  Purdy, ain’t it.  As soon as I finish up the other socks I started on the trip to NH, I’ll cast Kim’s luscious yarn on.

I turned the heel on the sock I started last weekend.  This yarn is fun.  I’m carrying the ribbing just down the top of the foot.

I also did a little more canning.  A bunch of Gramp’s tomatoes were nice and ripe and I didn’t want to lose them so I made some marinara sauce with them.  No recipe.  Just winged it which is usually what I do when I’m cooking.  I had a bunch of fresh parsley and basil to use up to so it all worked out great.  I only got three quarts but that red color is spot on.  I’ll save one jar to take back to Gramps on the next trip.  He’ll like that I think.

Cooking, Family, Knitting

Take Me Home, Country Roads….

Posted on by Jean

What a FABULOUS weekend! Family, friends, even some knitting!

The biggest reason I begged Dan to endure the winters of the Northeast (he is a Texan, you know) was to be near my family in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire. They’re only a five to six hour drive away (not counting the Friday before Labor Day when everyone and their brother seemed to be headed the same way we were…).  We’ve been so busy getting settled in that we’ve only been up there for once right after we landed back in the States.

Joe got a little taste of what I loved to do as a child.  Go pick dinner out of Gramps’ garden.  Fresh potatoes, tomatoes, cukes…  nummy.

My grandfather is the best gardener, historian, teacher (not professionally) and philosopher.  I love sitting and listening to him talk about anything.  When I was a little girl we weren’t close.  I lived with them for a while after my parent’s divorce when I was four but he was working (they were very young grandparents – their youngest of eight, my uncle, is only a year older than me) and busy with his own kids.  Age has mellowed him but he still doesn’t sit down for more than a couple of minutes at a time.   Even at 81 he still works hard keeping the up with the land and home he’s built for them up on the mountain.  I remember being about 11 and he and my grandmother would be walking us through the woods next to the house he was born in, telling us just where each room in their house would be.  I thought they were nuts at the time.  Funny, here we are, about 30 years later… yesterday morning Dan and I were walking in the woods with my grandfather having him show us just where we should put a clearing for our camper so we have a place to stay when we go up to work on our little cabin we’re going to build down the road from them.  It will be right across the dirt road where his grandmother’s house stood more than 50 years ago.   I love family history and I love going home.  I love showing my boys through the little town where my roots go way back.  Lots of people have that every day but growing up military and then raising military kids…  that’s one of the things I miss the most.  Roots.

Years ago Gramps used to make these spicy pickled green tomatoes.   As he got older he stopped making them and my Uncle Chet started.  Dan and I always managed to get a jar and we’d savor them for as long as we could.   If you remember, my Uncle Chet passed away suddenly less than a year ago.  Gramps and I made a date for this past Saturday to make those special little treats and I couldn’t help thinking Uncle Chet was up there grinning down at us and probably thinking we’d never make them as good as him.  He’s probably right. lol.  It was so much fun to share this with my grandfather.  He showed me how it was done.  When we were leaving this morning he told me I could take half the jars and he gave me a few pounds of green romas so I could make some more.  I wouldn’t take more than two jars and I plan on bringing some back to him on our next trip.

The other big treat was getting to finally meet someone that I’ve considered a friend for quite some time now.  Dan and I felt right at home in Kim and Ken’s wonderful home.   They live only about a half an hour from my grandparents so I know we’ll be seeing each other again and hopefully have the chance to spoil them as they did us.   I brought my camera.  I really did.  I have no idea why I didn’t take any photos because they would have been great.  When we got back to my grandparents and were trying to describe the day I hit myself in the head in disbelief.  Kim and I have so much in common and it was so fun to finally meet her family and her beautiful little dogs.  It was funny to see four little Cavs go sniffing at Aggie (who is a little alpha and used to being in charge).  The hubs kept busy talking the whole time as well.  The boys even had a great time playing in the pool and rolling around with all the dogs.

I even got a little knitting done on the trip there and back.  Just a sock but it feels good to have the wool and needles in my hands again….

I leave you with a before and after picture of the town store that my great-grandparents ran for years.   It’s so sad to see it as run down apartments now.