24 November - A glorious 'black Friday'

Since I do not partake in the madness at retail locations today, we spent the morning preparing a new flowerbed for next year.


This is next to the garden, on the east side, and will be a perennial bed, mostly. (also a place to toss rocks that are found in the vegetable garden) The bed is about 8' wide at the center, and tapers off at each side, with about 6" of dirt in the front section and 10" in the rear section. If I run short of time to plan flowers, this will be a gourd or squash bed next year.

23 November - Happy Thanksgiving Pumpkin Bread

Or maybe pumpkin muffins.... either way, the pumpkins were a success. One of the relatives actually baked and mashed the pumpkin for pies, I'm not so adventurous, and went with the canned variety. (also, I found myself beginning the Thanksgiving baking the morning of, and was told very late in the process that I'd need to make an emergency apple pie - nobody was bringing the apple pie!)

Pumpkin Bread


1 1/2 Cups Flour
1 teaspoon Baking Soda
1/2 teaspoon Salt
1 teaspoon Cinnamon, ground
1/2 teaspoon Nutmeg, ground
1/4 teaspoon Cloves, ground
1/4 teaspoon Ginger, ground

1/2 Cup Butter
1 Cup Sugar
1 Cup Pumpkin, prepared
1 teaspoon Vanilla
2 Eggs

1 Cup Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips

Sift dry ingredients.
Cream butter & sugar. Add eggs, pumpkin, and vanilla, blend well. Add dry ingredients to mixture. Stir in Chocolate Chips.

Pour batter into greased loaf pan or muffin tin. Bake loaves at 350°F for 1 hour, muffins at 400°F for 20 minutes.

Bread is done when toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

I have omitted half the sugar with no ill effects.

Edit: G'ma liked the muffins, so they MUST be good!

11 November, A month off

Well folks, I've been traveling a bit so I didn't get any posts in for a few weeks now. For that matter I didn't get any work done either.

But we did have a somewhat surprise "thunder-snow" Friday night, dumped about 4" of the stuff on us. The carrots and parsnips are buried. If the weather dries up a bit, or freezes the ground just a bit, I can go back out and pick some. But as it stands, there's way too much mud to be traipsing about in the garden.

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