Pumpkins

We have had a full weekend of fall fun, I am ready for a little rest as Tyler would say!! We had Sunday dinner early today so Bob could get on the road, the kitchen is clean, the house is quite, I think I will spend the rest of the day doing nothing. It has been a long time since I have done nothing, I hope I remember how to do it!! I have plenty I could be doing, a bushel of apples await me in the garage, 6 more pie pumpkins greet me when I come in the door, the sweet potato's are waiting their turn in the dehydrator and the scrap room is in a mess again. But it can all wait, I need a long nap and a do nothing evening.
On to the pumpkin post!!

Picked these 4 Pie Pumpkins up last week at the market, none of ours made it :( We will try again next year in a new spot we will be working on over the fall and winter. Notice pie pumpkins are not bright orange like carving pumpkins.

Gave them a good scrubbing and double wrapped them in heavy foil and baked for 3 hours (wasn't sure how long to bake them). You should always place a drip pan under them or you will have a mess in your oven (I speak from experience) I had a drip pan setting on the counter but forgot to put it in the oven, UGH, I now know my fancy stoves self cleaning feature works well.

Once the pumpkins are baked and cooled, you remove the seeds and stringy stuff then scoop out the pulp. This is a messy job, so messy I couldn't take a photo, I had pumpkin pulp every where. Now whip up a truly fresh pumpkin pie!! Yummy Notice my crappy pie shell? Mine rarely turn out looking very good but at least it taste good.

The rest of the pulp was dehydrated, I let it dry most of the day and overnight, in the morning I ran all of it through the blender, came out the consistency of corn meal. It will take 1/2 cup of the dried pumpkin to make a pie, just add 2 cups of hot water to reconstitute it. The 4 pumpkins I had worked out to be 6 1/2 pies. Picked up more pie pumpkins over the weekend so I will keep working on filling this jar before pumpkin season is over. But not today, I need sleep!!

Finally a day of some play!!

First off finished Heathers entry hall, turned out nice and everything was 50% off or more!! Love a deal.

I was finally able to work in the scraproom today for fun!! Designed our Christmas card for this year, now just need to make 50 more before Christmas, maybe I will post the card later, forgot to take a picture of them. Also put together a few gifts combining 2 of my favorite things, scrapbooking and preserved food, can't post a photo until my buddies receive their gifts (they read the blog)

Hit the Farmers market this morning and picked up some pie pumpkins, got them baked and in the dehydrator, should be done tomorrow. Here is a tip if you decide to bake pie pumpkins. After you wrap them in heavy aluminum foil make sure and place a pan under them to catch any juices that could leak out, don't leave the pan on the counter beside the oven, yep did that, now I have to drag out the manual for the stove to figure out how to use the self cleaning mode otherwise the oven is gonna catch on fire. CRAP

Duhhh...

Picked up the "Taste of Home" soup special publication last week, we eat lots of soup in the fall and winter, always looking for a new family favorite. One of the tips in the magazine was to line a bowl with plastic wrap then pour leftover soup in and freeze, then pack in ziplock bags for individual servings of leftovers. What a great idea, that was my duhh moment, I normally freeze whatever is leftover in plastic containers, they waste room in the freezer, the soup can stain the plastic, our girls can't seem to remember to return the plastic ware and sometimes there is just too much for one meal. For Bob and I we usually eat 1 bowl or maybe 1 1/2 bowls each of soup at supper, when I used this new method I decided to vacuum pack the soup with 3 bowls each, perfect size for us!! This is going to be a great way to send a quick easy meal home with our girls for lunch or supper (Son-In-Laws not very good soup eaters)

Tried a new Black Bean soup recipe today, need to tweak it a bit for our family then it will be a keeper, YAA. I am a lone ranger today so one bowl was plenty for me, the rest is in the freezer for quick easy meals later on, LOVE learning a new trick!! One thing I did have to do to free the soup from the bowl was to set the bowls in a little cool water in the sink, otherwise the plastic wrap was tearing when I tried to take the soup out to repackage.

Wore Slap Out

Only One Side of the closet

I have put cleaning out the scraproom off long enough, I grounded myself for the day and even used the time out bear to keep me going, set it for 1 hour then I could take a break for :30 minutes before going back for an additional hour. Started at 7:00 AM it is now 8:30 PM and I am still not done, however I have made a big dent, surely I will be able to finish by tomorrow. Packed up 4 boxes of supplies to send to a good home, 2 more boxes are ready for the garage sale and 1 huge bag went to the trash. I still have a few area's I haven't sorted out yet that need to be done before I call it quits.

After I finish the room I need to spend a day, maybe 2 working on photo files in the PC and printing photos from the past year, how in the world did I get so far behind, beats me. I have 5 scrapbooks waiting to be updated and returned to our girls then on to Tyler's for the past 6 month's. I will be waiting until late fall to start working on the baby girls scrapbooks, I need to make a run to a scrapbook store to get inspired, with all that I have squirreled away I don't have much of anything for the babies. The closest store is almost 2 hours away so I need to save up and make a day of it to stock up. I had hoped CTMH would have something for girls in the latest cattie but no such luck, gonna have to take the show on the road. I have been VERY good all summer and haven't bought one single scrapbook related thing (except a CTMH order last week, doesn't count it is not in yet)

Apple Spice

Ground apple Peel's

Dehydrated Apple Peels

Couldn't post all the apple projects on the last post so here you go, I tried some in my tea this morning , really good on a cold dreary day! I only used peels from around 20 apples, wasn't sure what I would do with them so I didn't want to go crazy. Next round of apples I will be doing more, the ground peels will be great in lots of baking recipes and teas and super easy to do. Just throw the peels in the dehydrator overnight, then I ground them in the blender (don't have a food processor)

Apples..........

1 Gallon Dehydrated apples

Apple Bread

Applesauce

Apple Pie



52 Pounds of Apples


Bob picked up apples in Va last week $15.00 for the box, our weekend was pretty full of working apples!! Step one was to put together a crumb apple pie for desert. Yummy!! Then on to the real work, canned 16 jars of applesauce, a gallon of dehydrated apples, apple pie, apple bread and apple spice to use in tea's or baking. Still need an additional bushel to can apple pie filling, spiced apples and more dehydrated apples then my work with apples for the year should be over. Check out "Dehydrate 2 store" website to see the amazing stuff this lady does with apples, remarkable!!

Sweet Potato's

Monster Tater

Spent Friday playing around a bit in the garden, working on a few herbs, of course had to bring in more okra and a few odds and ends, decided what the heck might as well be done with the sweet potato's, stupid vines were everywhere. We didn't expect much of anything since I only planted 4 plants and they were in the square foot garden which we have had no luck with other than for herbs. Well low and behold we hit the mother lobe!! Who would have guessed that under all that twisted viney mess lay over 40 pound of real sweet potato's!!! When I dug up the first one Rambo man was as surprised as I was that we got at least one potato, but as I continued to dig more and more out we both got so excited. Rambo man was putting them in my garden colander as I dug away when he realized heck we need a box to bring them all in.

I should have goggled harvesting sweet potato's before I got started but really and truly I thought we were just going to be doing clean up in the bed, never dreamed we would really get a thing out of it. So we brought it all in and I carefully washed each and every one of the beauties only to read later we should have left the dirt on them and left them outside to harden up for 7 to 10 days. CRAP We hope I didn't mess them up to bad buy washing them off, they are now on the deck where they will stay for a week or so. I need to run up to the farmers market this week so I will take one along and ask my buddies what to do and for how long to do it. If all goes well I will be loading the dehydrator up with some of our own taters soon. Next year we will double the amount planted (8) maybe even more but they are going in the back of the yard where the vines won't take up as much space and make me crazy trying to mow around it all. Didn't plan on cooking the monster potato but a friend who knows her way around the garden said "cook er up" so when the time comes that's what I will do.