Monday, September 27, 2010

 
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Butternut Squash Rolls

Found in an old craft/cooking magazine but don't remember what title is but it says the recipe is from Bernice Morris of Marshfield, Mo.

1 package active dry yeast
1 cup warm milk (110-115 degrees F.)
1/4 c. warm water (110-115 deg. F.)
3 TB softened butter or margarine
2 tsp salt
1/2 c. sugar
1 cup cooked and mashed butternut squash
5-5 1/2 c. flour

In large mixing bowl, dissolve yeast in milk and water.
Add butter, salt, sugar, squash and 3 cups of flour; beat until smooth. Add enough remaining flour to form a soft dough. Turn onto a floured surface; knead until smooth and elastic, about 6-8 minutes. Place in a greased bowl, turning once to grease top. Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1 hour. Punch dough down. Form into rools. place in 2 greased 10 inch cast-iron skillets or 9 inch round pans. Cover and let rise until doubled, about 30 minutes. Bake at 375 degrees F. for 20-25 minutes ir until golden brown. Yeild about 2 dozen.

I put mine in a pyrex rectangular dish, made them big and got 16 rolls.
They are wonderful!

New babies!

Last night when we put the sheep up for the night we realized that Little Girl was going to deliver very soon. Her bag was swollen and tight. Sure enough this morning about 9:30 AM her water broke. I had to go to work so we put her in the birthing stall in the barn. With Pat's help on the second one; she had two precious babies. The first was a little boy who is white with a pale brown face and a brown circle around his neck. He was 9# 3 oz. Then came the little girl who had her front legs folded under her instead of feet first, nose between. It's rather hard to give birth to head and knees simutaneously! But Pat worked with her and one very dark brown little girl with a white patch on her head and striped legs, esp. the left rear leg, came forth. She was 9# 1 oz. In honor of Pat, I named the babies Wayne and Patty (Patrick Wayne). The mama is a barbados hair sheep and the daddy 1/2 wooly and 1/2 suffolk so we get some fantastic little ones from that mix! They both have barbados faces, slender and small and suffolk legs, long. Of course, I am in love with them. We'll try to get some pictures tonight before we put the sheep in their night pasture.

I made the butternut squash rolls and they are rising this late afternoon. Thank goodness for the kitchenaid mixer with the dough hook! I had never used it to make yeast bread before but it's such a snap and makes the kneading part real minimal. I felt about 14 again kneading bread! I'll let you know how they turn out.

Gotta clean out one more kitchen cabinet before I start supper. Ta Ta.

Sunday, September 26, 2010

Fall is here and how!

Well, I had no idea how busy I would get with fall harvest! But I learned how to make Kosher dill pickles and I wish Daddy was alive to taste them. They turned out better than store bought. I still have many pie pumpkins to harvest, a few squash and many grapes plus the tomatoes are finally peaking. So I'm torn between wanting the tomatoes to go on forever and wanting frost to put an end to those gardening chores. I have boxes piled on the dining area floor of canned goods and jelly. I ran out of cupboard space long ago. So as we strive toward the obtaining of money to finish our root cellar, we have boxes mounting up. The utility room has stacks of pumpkins, acorn squash and butternut and buttercup squash. The potatoes need to be dug. The okra cry a few more leaves off every night. They are so fragile.

Talked to Mom today, she enjoyed the wedding (Lydia and Dennis). Her memory is getting bad and she forgets how to do things if she doesn't do them every day (like how to work the tape player) and her cataracts are making reading anything difficult, probably time for them to come off. She continues to be dizzy a lot. Hard to know whether meds or not getting enough fluids down. But it's probably a combination of the two. I so dread getting old as I watch so many people struggle with it and see how litle advice matters. And, I'll probably be as bad as they. Watch out nursing homes! My generation is going to be terrors!

For those of you that are keeping track, our Sabbath school class is now in the middle of Proverbs. We are reading 7 chapters each week and trying to find one each week that we would like to hang on the wall. I'm happy that we are reaching a place in our relationships where we are more comfortable sharing how the texts impact our lives and what we wish we had better understood as we were growing up. We came to the conclusion, as a group that it's not what you say but how you say it that makes the difference in our understanding and accepting correction and discipline. Anyway, we are now half way through reading the Bible! Isn't that cool!

Somehow, Blackie got to Little Girl before we seperated the sheep for summer and she is very pregnant but when the babies will occur, we haven't a clue! Sleeping Beauty is looking a little too fat for our comfort so I suppose we will have to get her down and take a peek. To much wool to see without the sheep upside down.

Pat's doing our 3rd cutting of hay today. Not a very big harvest but the cool weather tells you it's now or loose the alfalfa with a hard frost.

Well, that is it for today

Sunday, August 8, 2010

hiatus over

I do so appologize at the long gap. First I passed my annual kidney stones and then I had to catch up with all I let go during that time. We took pictures of the baby chicks tonight all crammed in with their mother and it appears we got 4 roosters and 2 hens from the comb growth. So soon I will get to try the age old practice of killing and eating our own chickens. I'm not looking forward to it! We are being swamped with zucchini and spaghetti squash and soon it will be armenian cucumbers, too. We finally got our rains these past 2 weeks, a bit late for the root vegetables but the squash and pumpkins are making the garden look like a jungle.

I wrote some notes durin the time I didn't post, however, I didn't date them. Anyway, you can get an idea of some of the stuff I thought about.

Wednesday: this morning it was hazy gray with clouds and more impending rain. I had 15 minutes before I had to shower and get ready for work, so I went out and sat on the deck. I looked at the trees and flowers, I've planted. The sheep were grazing peacefully in the pasture. The chickens are finding nice bugs after last night's rain. The mama chicken is showing her babies how to scratch and find good things to eat. If the mama got too far away, I'd hear a baby chick make a tiny trilling noise and run toward her. It was a totally different sound than the cheep, cheep they usually make. Did the noise mean "wait for me, mama" or "mama, where are you?" or maybe it was the happy sound for simply looking up and seeing mama. The dog lay on the lawn and munched on an old bone she had stashed and recovered. My stress melted away. Then I realized that my 15 minutes were probably gone and I jumped up and raced to the shower. I looked at the clock and was stunned that only 5 minutes had passed!

Of course, I knew the passenger side wiper needed to be replaced and procrastinated until it rained, and rained hard, too. I had changed the blade probably 2 years ago all by myself and did it with difficulty. Now I couldn't remember exactly how it went. So in the pouring rain I got the old wiper off and managed to knock a little part out of the wiper assembly so I had to look at the driver's side wiper way too many times to figure out where and how it went back together. then I finally got a new one on with much prayer and frustration. It was much easier once I found the helpful little diagram in my trunk that had come with the wiper. Now will I remember the next time I need to change one how it goes? I am so NOT mechanically inclined.

When I got to Gene's house, the gentle rain and humidity continued and Glenda's dill made the air smell faintly of polish dill pickles. It made me hungry for sharp cheddar cheese sandwiches with dill pickles, sweet onion and miracle whip on oatnut bread, a few Lays classic potato chips and an ice cold rootbeer.

Stopped at the library and returned my books and got 5 more.
Ladies With Options by Cynthia Hartwick
The Tie That Binds, Where You Once Belonged, Plainsong, and Eventide all by by Kent Haruf.

Finished Ladies With Options. It's a must read for those times you need some humor and a quick read for pleasure. The author has some sharp bites of humor that are quoteable. "She's an intellectual omnivore, she wants to know everything." "Aikido, which I think is Japanese for flowing water or call a doctor." Yoga's a lot like being a demented mime" or on having a bad singing voice, sounded like a "professional beagle imitator".

Finished the last of Kent Haruf's books. I'm glad I read them in order of his writing of them so I could hear his voice beginning and watch him grow. He writes about the farmers and ranchers and people of the Eastern slope of Colorado. I understand them better now. But his best two are the last two. First, Plainsong and then Eventide. I hope he writes more in this vein. Excellent stories.

So now we are caught up. Tomorrow is class at my house and we are going to start on our art quilts. It will be 12 x 12 and it will be interesting to see how everyone chooses their topic and makes their quilt. Tomorrow, we will look at various pictures of other's art quilts (in magazines) and I'll show them my idea of what I will do, plus how Steam and Seam iron on applique stuff works. I'm going to use a baby picture of my lamb Speckles and use flower appliques, beading and a bit of stamping but I won't be sure of how exactly it will turn out, it will evolve as I do it. But I die cut some flower appliques out of the material I bought for it and it's going to be real cool. The first time I've ever tried this but I'm crazy so I lead the pack!