I Can't Believe . . .

Today on my way home from work I was driving through snow showers. Shortly after I dropped off Priscilla at her home (the lady I carpool with) those showers turned into full blown snow and I was soon driving in white-out conditions. This is October. I'm not ready for snow until December 25. The snow-plows are out and the wind is howling. I hope this isn't a sign of what's to come. I even used my four-wheel drive, just because it makes me feel safer.

Apple Dumplings

This morning I really needed to get busy working on those two bushels of apples that need to be made into sauce. But, I decided to make apple dumplings first.

Several years ago when we lived in California, my friends Cathy and Dore and I were hosting a women's Bible study/dinner/craft night. Since it was fall we decided to decorate with pumpkins and carry the fall theme to our dinner too. After we planned the menu, we divided up the menu items between us. I volunteered to make the apple dumplings. I realized that I had never made them or eaten them, but they sounded so good and I had plenty of time to figure out a recipe. I won't bore you with all the details, but I tried dozens of recipes that were just horrible. I was down to just two days before the dinner and I still didn't have a recipe for apple dumplings that was acceptable. I begged for Bob's help and he came to my rescue. We gleaned from several of the recipes, added our own ideas and came up with this apple dumpling recipe that has been a hit ever since.

The first step is to make the syrup. Place 1 3/4 cups water, 1 cup sugar, 1/4 tsp nutmeg, and 1/4 tsp cinnamon in a pot. Bring to a boil and then simmer while you prepare the apples. Add 1-2 Tablespoons margarine while simmering. This recipe is for six small apples.

Core and peel the apples. I now have an apple corer, but when I first made the recipe I just cut the apples in half to core them and then put them back together and wrapped them in the dough. It worked just fine. To make the dough, I use three cups unbleached white flour, 1 tsp salt, and 1 cup butter flavored Crisco. Mix until crumbly and then add enough cold water to form ball. You don't want it too wet and sticky. If you prefer, you can buy prepared pie crust at the store and use that. (it won't be as good though)

Roll out the dough in a rectangle and cut in squares big enough to wrap one apple. Roll the apple in a mixture of 1/4 cup sugar, 1/4 tsp cinnamon, and 1/4 tsp nutmeg. Then place the apple on the pie dough square.

Take all four corners and tuck them into the center of the apple.

Take the flaps that remain and fold them to the side of the apple.

The apple with the dough on it will look something like this.


A neater way to wrap the apple is to fold two opposite ends of the dough up over the apple and tuck the dough in the center of the apple. Then fold the other to ends in towards the center and pull them up and tuck inside the apple. Either way works just fine. Place the apples in a glass baking pan and pour the hot syrup over the apples with the syrup filling the bottom of the pan.

Bake in a pre-heated 375 degree oven for 45 minutes. The results are pictures above. I adjusted the recipe to make eight apples. Serve these with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

While I was inside making apple dumplings, Bob was outside hauling wood to be put in our basement for our wood furnace. We have a combination wood, coal, oil furnace.

This wood was cut last summer and has seasoned and is now ready to burn. Bob loaded and hauled it up from the barn.

Then he had to unload it from the truck and throw it down into the basement.

All this and more has to go into the basement and then be stacked. We have already had our heating oil tank filled, but we need to have a load of coal delivered soon. I prefer to heat with the wood. It's a much warmer heat.

Grape Juice Applesauce and Visitors

Today was another busy day off. On Thursday, Bob had picked all the concord grapes from the vine on our arbor. So, today I had to make grape juice or lose the grapes, which I couldn't see wasting. I'm still working on the three bushels of apples that one our members had brought over to us, so I needed to also make more applesauce.

Right after breakfast, I added the breakfast dishes to the dishwasher and since it was now full, I started it. I decided to get the grapes started first and then move on to the apples.

I washed the grapes first and then placed them in the top of the steam juicer.

With the steam juicer filled with fresh grapes I placed the lid on and waited for the juice to appear.

You can see in the tube, that the juice has started.

I place clean canning jars in a 200 degree oven. The jars need to be hot when the hot grape juice is added.

I'm filling the jars with the juice that has been steamed from the grapes.

I made a huge mess. I got grape juice all over the cabinets, stove and floor.

Then Ryan and the boys stopped by to borrow the box trailer so they could move their things out of storage into their new home on Saturday night. They hadn't had breakfast and were hungry. I made them scrambled eggs and toast. They enjoyed their breakfast and were soon ready to get on the road. Before they left, one of our members stopped by for a few minutes. He had drilled the well at Ryan and Lisa's house and was coming by to give us the bill. Bob told him I was in the house making grape juice so he came in and gave me a few pointers on how not to have grape juice all over the place. He and his wife make 70 quarts of grape juice every year.

He showed me how to put the hose in the handle so the excess grape juice wouldn't spill out when the jar was full. That little shared secret saved me a lot of clean up after my project was completed. I also started the applesauce. I did three batches of applesauce. Two of the batches were applesauce/raspberry sauce. I did it without sugar. It surprisingly tastes really good without the sugar. My aunt Kate can't have sugar and I want to take some to her at Thanksgiving time. I also wanted to make some for Tina who will be visiting me right before Thanksgiving. If the rest of us want it a little sweeter, we can always add some sweetener. I think using maple syrup would make it really yummy.

I have my own system for making the applesauce. I quarter the apples and core them. Then I place them in bowl of water. Then the apples are transferred to the pot.

Soon I heard the dogs barking and figured that someone was here. I was right! A couple from the church were on their way home from shopping and decided to stop by and say hello. They came in and visited with us at the kitchen table. They tried the grape juice, which they loved.

I did 18 quarts of grape juice, seven pints and six quarts of applesauce.

I decided I had time to make a fresh apple cake so I quickly put together the ingredients and placed it in the oven. It takes the cake one and a half hours to bake. While it was baking I cleaned the kitchen and got ready to leave for the evangelistic series that was beginning Friday evening in the Roosevelt Church. We needed to leave by 5:00 p.m. The cake came out of the oven at 5:00 p.m. and Bob and I walked to the car to leave. Whew! What a day.

Fall Harvest

Bob is enjoying his time at home once again. He really didn't get to garden this past summer like he enjoys, but he did manage to plant a rather large garden and it has been very plentiful. This week Bob has been busy getting ready for evangelistic meetings that start tomorrow night. He is the speaker and will be using power-point for his presentations. This is new to Bob so he is at the church tonight with a computer guru to make sure everything is working properly. Not only has Bob been preparing for this three weeks series of meetings, he has spent some time getting the house and yard ready for winter. He won't be able to get everything done that should be done, but he'll get most of the "have-to's" done.

Today Bob replaced several of the chimney blocks and smoke stack. The old ones had deteriorated and we would have never made it through the winter without problems. He also dug potatoes and beets and brought in the pumpkins, gourds, buttercup winter squash, and spaghetti squash. Tomorrow he will put most of these in the root cellar to use during the winter months.

Bob also picked several baskets full of concord grapes. Tomorrow I'll make some grape juice and grape jelly. I'm also going to make more applesauce. Tonight I went to a women's Bible study class and one of the ladies had brought homemade applesauce. I took a small bowl of it to taste, and it was so good I had to find out her secret. She said that she cooked the apples with a little raspberry/apple frozen concentrated juice and then added raspberries. After it had all cooked down, she mashed it. She didn't add any sweetener of any kind and it was wonderful! I'm going to make some like that tomorrow using some of the raspberries I froze last Friday from our berry patch. Oh, the color of the applesauce was a beautiful pink. There were also homemade pumpkin muffins at the class and I ate more than I should have. They were the miniature muffins, so taking two or three didn't look to much like a pig.

After the Bible class we worked on stained glass candle holders. I'm really happy with the way mine turned out. The instructor took them home to grout them for us and will bring them back to our next class. I took my camera to the class, but forgot to take the chip from the computer so I don't have any pictures of the class.

A bucket of potatoes and a bucket of beets.


A wheel barrel full of red potatoes. Dirt and all!

Bob stills has to dig the Yukon Gold and russets.

A big pile of pumpkins, gourds, buttercup squash, and spaghetti squash.

Another pile of pumpkins and squash.

Here are the grapes Bob picked from our vineyard. We'll make juice tomorrow and maybe jelly. Sometimes I freeze the pulp after making the juice and make the jelly at a later time. I'm not sure what I'll do tomorrow. It's nice to take out a bag of grape pulp and make jelly. It sure doesn't take very long when it's pre-measured and frozen.

It's Still Fall - I Think

This morning on my way to work I experience a few snow showers. During the morning, there were several snow flakes coming down. Nothing accumulated, but it was exciting to watch. It really is beautiful here when it snows. I don't think it will be too much longer before we get measurable amounts of snow. But until winter settles in, I'm going to continue enjoying the beauty of fall and the fall treats that find their way to our office.

This morning on the conference table was a basket of homemade carmel dipped apples. I saved mine so I could take it home and share with Bob.

The apples were all packaged so nicely.

Without the wrapping you can see how delicious it looks. A Granny Smith apple dipped in carmel, dribbled with chocolate, and topped with crushed peanuts.
The lady that made them said they were easy to make, but I know I would have a gigantic mess if I tried. All of hers looked perfect!!

Mom's Apple Cake Recipe

I was excited to receive an apple recipe today from Rachael. We have a lot of apples so tonight when I got home from work I decided to make the apple cake rather than make applesauce again (last night I make six jars of applesauce). Once the cake came out of the oven and cooled a little, I couldn't resist trying a piece. It's delicious!!! Bob wanted a piece too, but he doesn't eat between meals so he said he'd have a piece for breakfast. Funny, I'll have one for breakfast too!!!

Mom's Apple Cake

6 apples, I used McIntosh apples

1 T cinnamon

5 T sugar

2 3/4 cups flour

1 T baking powder

1 tsp salt

1 cup vegetable oil

2 cups sugar

1/4 cup orange juice

2 1/2 tsp vanilla

4 eggs

1 cup walnuts, chopped

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a tube pan. Peel, core and chop apples into chunks. Toss with cinnamon and sugar and set aside.

Stir together flour, baking powder and salt in a large mixing bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together oil, orange juice, sugar and vanilla. Mix wet ingredients into the dry ones, then add eggs, one at a time. Scrape down the bowl to ensure all ingredients are incorporated.

Pour half of batter into prepared pan. Spread half of apples over it. Pour the remaining batter over the apples and arrange the remaining apples on top. Bake for about 1 1/2 hours, or until a tester comes out clean.

I am changing the name of this cake to Rachael's Apple Cake just because she's the one that discovered it!!!

Hallelujah! The House is Finished!!!!!

The house is finished!!! Shannon, the kids, and I had a great time doing gymnastics on the living room floor. That carpet is sure nice and soft and clean!!! The appraiser came today and tomorrow the inspector will come and hopefully we will have the occupancy permit. Ryan and Lisa are anxious to get moved in to their new home. It turned out really nice. Everthing is like new. Bob was singing the "Hallelujah Chorus" on the way home.

It was so much fun playing with the kids. Shannon called me this evening and asked if I was sore? Nope! Shannon wasn't so lucky.

Signs of Fall at our House

Here are a few pictures around our place that don't really do justice to the beauty, but you can get an idea of how beautiful it is here.

This is one of the maple trees in our front yard.

Lola

The back of our house

The two kitties that live at house house now.

Looking out toward the back of the property.

Concord grapes.

Punkin enjoying the beautiful weather.

We have a lot of work to do before we are ready for winter. So far all we have done is have the heating oil tank filled. We still need to have wood and coal delivered. Bob has to repair the chimney too. Bob brought in the winter squash today, but we still have to dig the potatoes, carrots, and beets. Weather reports predict a possibility of snow this Thursday. We need to hurry.

Fall Friday

Today was a very busy day. We're trying to finish up on the house Ryan and Lisa are going to buy and we're trying to get our house ready for winter.

These are the beautiful fall leaves that are presently covering our driveway. If we don't get a big wind storm soon, we'll have to rake them up.

This is a picture of the house Ryan and Lisa are going to buy. I had to go down early this morning to meet with the district manager of Home Depot and the owner of Innovative Stone. The granite counter tops that were installed in the house, have pits all over them and I'm having a fit. They are suppose to get back with me next week to let me know what can be done about it. My granite counter top doesn't have pits and Lori's granite counter top doesn't have pits and I've never seen a display one with pits.

This picture didn't turn out very well and I only took one. I've already washed and put them in the freezer. Bob picked these today from our raspberry patch. It's suppose to freeze tonight, so this is probably the last of the berries.

Bob found a yellow iris in my flower "cutting" garden. I think it must be confused about what time of year it is.

I also picked up this machine to help me with making the applesauce.

We baked buttercup winter squash today. We have quite a lot of this from our garden.

Bob seasoned it with a little salt, butter, and maple syrup. It is delicious.

I'm glad it's Sabbath and I can relax. Bob has the fireplace lit and I think I'll go join him on the couch.