C is for Cookie!

That's good enough for me. :)

I sang this song over and over again this morning while baking the 1st batch of Peggy's Cookies. I guess baking 7 dozen cookies will do that to you. I wondered while baking and singing (in my head) if Judy used to have this song go through her head while she made batch after batch of these cookies. And it reminded me of the first time I saw her make this big batch of cookie dough. I had never seen such a large recipe. Little did I know what life had in store for me!

So... Reid had to be at the church at 5am to leave for Scout Camp this morning, so I was up bright and early and figured I should just get started baking the little beauties.

I made the dough yesterday and let it sit overnight in the fridge. Diana had sent me an article on how to make really good cookies and it says leaving the dough in the fridge for about 24-36 hours is one way to make them taste really good. Well... my dough was only in there for about 12 hours, but that's longer than I normally do, so hopefully they'll be tastier than normal.

And a couple of years ago, Sara recommended that I start using bittersweet chocolate chips instead of semi-sweet. I like the change there, too.

So. Peggy's cookies are now Peggy-Sara-Diana Cookies. You can all go update your recipe cards. :)

Sorry. No pictures. But there are 81 cookies in my freezer waiting for the beach trip. 81 more will get baked in a few days. Sara's bringing two more batches, so mountains of cookies are on the horizon.

Um... Son... We need to talk.

There are a million conversations you imagine yourself having with your teenage son. You prepare for talking about dating, sex, drugs, gangs, bullying. All sorts of important things. I was not prepared for this:

Two days ago, we ran out of milk. Reid had already poured his cereal (plain cheerios) and I told him to just put some plastic wrap over it and he could eat it the next day. I noticed last night that the bowl was still sitting covered on the counter, so I thought, "I'll just eat that." I pick it up and notice that it feels awfully heavy to be a bowl of cheerios. So I dig around with my spoon and was horrified at what I found. I separated the two ingredients. Mike and I weighed them separately and took photos so that we could always remember the event. And we've both had our "talks" with Reid. I hope this never comes up again... but if it takes the place of finding drugs in our house, I'll take this any day. :)

Here are the innocent Cheerios. Weighing in at 67 grams.

And here is the invading substance! Weighing in at a whopping 114 grams! The poor Cheerios never had a chance!

Fortune Cookies

This is an old story from our week at the beach this past April.

In an effort to "research" the local take out joints (and in an effort to find food I was willing to eat), we ordered some sesame chicken from the local chinese take out place. The food was standard take out and was perfectly good.

Then we opened the fortune cookies...

A little back story: I had just told John and Judy that I was pregnant. I was about 11 weeks or so. Mike's 40th birthday was the next day.

So... I open my fortune cookie and my fortune reads:

A new wardrobe brings great joy and change in your life.

Well... we had a good laugh about that one. Spot on!

Now for Mike's turn:

To be eighty years young is more cheerful and hopeful than forty years old.

How did they do that? That's just eerie! :)

Canning Woes

Friday night I was getting everything set up so that I could can about half of my 25lb bag of black beans. Mike brought my jars down from the attic, I got the 12.5lb of beans soaking and I got the kitchen all clean and ready. This was July 4th, so we were getting ready to start the fireworks when major storms decided to come through and rain us out. Since there was nothing else to do, I sat down and started reading through my canning book and remembered that my mom's canner was missing a piece. So I called her, we talked, then I got online and ordered her the missing piece. While I was there (and bored), I clicked on a link for my canner just to see how it was described and admire it (I was bored). Lo and behold, in big letters: Do Not Use on Smooth Top Stoves!

Okay. This was a shock to me. I immediately started reading everywhere I could online to try to find out if this was, in fact, the truth. And sadly it is. There are many people who have canned on their smooth tops for years with no trouble, but many people say they have ruined their stoves doing it. And the biggest thing is that it's possible for the stove to regulate itself so that it doesn't overheat and that can cause a drop in your pressure... a big no-no in canning.

So... I had 12.5lb of beans already soaking. My mom is coming in two weeks with two bushels of green beans. What on earth do I do?

Well, after much stress, a few tears (hey, I'm pregnant, I'm allowed), and a few phone calls, our neighbors down the street (bless their souls) let me invade their kitchen for the day so I could can two canner loads of beans. Beans need to be pressure canned for 75 minutes, so this isn't a quick process. I was in their house for about 5 hours. I cooked the rest of the beans at my house and froze them. I would have had three canner loads. So our neighbors saved the day. I repaid them by giving them a can of beans and a can of my blackberry jam. I'm still in their debt.

And as far as when my mom comes, there is a single burner unit that supposedly has the power I need to be able to heat up the pressure canner. I'm thinking about buying it. It's a Waring Pro 1300 Watt Burner. Mike's concocting a plan to make a 10" aluminum disk that I can place on the glass stove top and then set my canner on top of it. One of the main problems with the canner is that it extends too far over the edge of the burner element which means that the glass would get too hot in places it's not supposed to. This could lead to the stove shutting off, the glass breaking, etc. I'm all for that solution, but I only have two weeks.

Anyway. My lesson: Never buy a smooth top stove again. I would have never bought this one if I had known I couldn't can on it. I do like it and everything, but it's not worth the hassle.

Blackberry Jam!

I took the kids to a blackberry/blueberry picking farm today. We had our milk jug buckets and started picking our little hearts out. We came home with three gallons of blackberries and one gallon of blueberries. I usually go to my mom's during the summer and pick her wild blackberries, but this summer with Reid's scout camp and the beach trip, there just wasn't going to be a good weekend. Plus her berries come in a little later than ours do, so they're not ready this week (when I could have gone)... or is it that the green beans wouldn't be ready? I want to do green beans, too, so it just wasn't working out for timing. So... the plan is that Mom is going to bring green beans here in a couple of weeks and she'll put up some jars of her blackberries and bring them here.

So why did I go pick blackberries? Well, Zach was really put out that he wasn't going to get to pick at grandma's house this summer. He's the only one of the boys who is interested in it and he loves to get out and pick when I'm picking at Mom's house. So, I didn't want to deprive him of that, so we all went this morning to pick.

And I made some blackberry jam! Here are some pictures!

Here are our three jugs of blackberries. And in case you can't tell... they're BIG.

See? Now... people will say that these large, cultivated ones lack the flavor of the smaller, wild berries. This is my first experience with non-wild blackberries, so I'll let you know what I think about it after I open a jar of jam. But so far, the flavor is fine. With the drought last year, my mom's berries were really tart. I thought it made great jam (that I'm still enjoying now).

Sorry for the sideways shot... I just wanted to show that my big canner fits down in the new sink! That is amazing! This canner is huge. Holds two stacks of pint jars. Man, I love my sink!

So first, you mush up the berries and add the "Sure-Jel" pectin packet. Bring that to a boil.

Put your clean jars in a warm oven to keep them hot and dry. (I don't know if this is a real recommended technique, but it works for me and my mom.)

Add a bunch of sugar! :) It's what makes it taste so yummy! (And see the pretty blueberries peeking in at the corner?)

See... Yummy! Gooey and yummy!

Then you fill your jars, put on lids and rings and...

Put them in the boiling water. This massive canner is a pressure canner. Jams and jellies only need a boil bath, so any big pot will do for that. I just like my canner, so I pull it out when I'm doing jam. Plus, I've got 25 lbs of black beans that I need to put up, so I need it to be out anyway. Anyway! You let the jars boil for about 5 minutes and pull them out and admire their beauty.

This is three batches. Then you get to listen to their little lids pop as they set up. Music to any canner's ears. Just a beautiful sound. And now I'm off to try my hand at some blackberry syrup and a blackberry cobbler for dessert tonight... I don't know if I'll be making dinner, but dessert's a given. :)

Yippee!

I got the drain pipe to work. Well, it's drying now, we'll see if there are any leaks in an hour when I'm allowed to test it. And I got a fancy tool for tightening the sink bolts. What I'm learning about DIY projects is that the first few you spend all the money you would have on having someone else install on tools. :) Thankfully we've been able to borrow a lot of them from neighbors, but we are much more equipped for home projects now than we were. Although I don't know if we'll ever do countertops again. Ugly!

However. They look great. Here are some pictures:

Mike had to crawl into the cabinet in order to attach the two corner cabinets. I had a really, really good laugh while he was trying to get in there.
Here he is "fully submerged" in the cabinet. He's a real trooper.


And there were more tight spaces when he had to attach the countertop to the cabinets by fitting his hand inside our tiny side cabinets. Again. He's a trooper.

A little variation of the typical soap on screws idea. It worked well for him.



And after we got the countertop all installed, we had to uninstall it to get the sink cut just right. I felt bad for Mike because I was insistant that we get this done that night. He was thinking we might could find a special tool from a neighbor the next day, but I needed my kitchen back! So he unscrewed all his screws, cut the rest of the sink cut (we just couldn't reach the very back), and then drilled new screw holes for new screws. Have I mentioned that he's a trooper?

And here it is. So pretty. I really like how the darker countertops accentuate the wood color of the cabinets. They are speckled with tans, so it really brings out the brown. (And you know how much I love brown!)

And here's the fancy sink. I left some dishes in it to show how deep it is. I don't know if you can really tell, but it's nice and deep. I'm in love with this sink. And notice the cutting board. Nice little extra to have. Who knows if I'll find it very useful or not.

And a close look at the corner. Mike really did a great job on this. I'm so grateful that he stuck with this. It was hard on him, I know. But it looks really great and we feel really good about having it done.

Now I'm going to tile the backsplash area between the countertops and the cabinets. Hopefully that will happen sometime in the next week or two. But I think our difficult projects are over. We just had the garage door spring break, so we're going to have to figure that one out. But no more major remodeling projects are in our foreseeable future.

And in case you didn't catch it, Mike is cool. :)

2:45 am

Well. The countertops are in. They got finished up about an hour ago. I sent Mike to bed and cleaned up a bit. I'm running the dishwasher now. Yea! The kitchen is still a wreck with tools and such, but it's much better than it was and we have a functioning sink. Well... a partially functioning sink. The left side drain isn't hooked up. I can't get it to quite fit. I'll have to find a fitting that will work for it tomorrow. I also need a special little tool to tighten the sink down really well to the counter. But I can pick those up in the morning and hopefully be completely done tomorrow afternoon. And even with only one functioning side, the new sink is awesome. I really like the depth thing. Very nice.

And the counters look good. I'll send out pictures tomorrow sometime.