Fall Adventure Day

I love fall.  I don't like pumpkin but in the spirit of early fall, which is what I am planning anyway, I made myself a pumpkin shake tonight.  But first, let me back up.  This morning I went to our local Farmers Market and it was Grand!!  

 Chesterton Farmers Market

The weather was beautiful and the Veggies are in full bloom just bursting with color and flavor just wishing someone would pick them.  Harry is at a race so my Saturday adventure started here.  

I got some tomatoes I am canning tomorrow

Some green beans for dinner one night

And a great new apron.  It has chickens and roosters on it!!  A big bonus....It's reversible!
I can't wait to wear it!!

I then went about 45 mins away to a town called New Carlisie and went to the Village Shoppes.  A great home decorating place.  I had a bunch of gift certificates to spend so I bought some fall stuff for the house...

While I was out a friend of mine called me to tell me about a night bike ride our town is sponsoring tonight, and asked if I wanted to go with her...What?? Really??  Of course!!!!  We just got our bikes a few weeks ago but I have been out on mine almost every day since we got them and I love it!  We needed to get lights for the bike and we were set!  Needless to say I am super excited but also super nervous!!  This will be the longest I have ridden, PLUS I forgot to mention, my friend, she;'s also my trainer so she is in GREAT shape and rides a lot!  She assures me we can go slow and stop any time.  It's a fun ride not competitive so we can go at our own pace, er I mean my pace!  

So after the  Village Shops, I went to where my sisters works about another half hour down the road and bought these cute items for my book shelves.

This is also a small home decorating shop and is filled with cute items.  She has a lot of her stuff there to, you can see her items on Etsy under Woodland Herb Garden.

I headed home and decided for dinner I would make myself a protein shake to get myself ready for the ride.  After a great fall shopping day what flavor should I have?  Well, Pumpkin of course!  It was great!

Super easy recipe, super yummy (and I don't like pumpkin!) and made my day complete!

Pumpkin Protein Shake

2 scoops Vanilla Protein Powder

2-3 T Pumpkin Puree

1 Cup Almond Milk

1 t Cinnamon

Put all in blender and add as much ice as you like and Viola! A great Pumpkin Shake.

I sprinkled a little more cinnamon on top to make it look pretty.

I am off!  Ready to ride under the stars....How cool is that?!?!

Freezing corn

Wow!  What a busy 2 weeks It has been!!  Between Kendalls birthday, Harrys birthday, getting 2 kids ready for back to college and 1 ready for back to school and 1 more ready to live on her own in her new apartment, it has been a whirlwind couple of weeks.  Whew!  I think it will start to slow down.....NOT!

However I did get a chance to try out a bunch of new recipes (which I will share in the next few days) and I got all of my corn put up for the winter.  I ended up having 27 bags of corn to freeze and take out in the cold winter months and enjoy.
Now I may do corn a little differently than others.  But, this is the way I find that works best for me and it tastes absolutely amazing in the middle of January!

Husk corn and put into boiling pot of water

"Cook" corn for only about 3 mins, then take out and immediately immerse into cold water to stop the cooking process.  

Then I use my electric knife to cut the corn from the cob.  (Now, my aunt will freeze some corn on the cob like this and instead of shaving the corn off of the cob she freezes the entire cob with corn and all.  Then she just takes it out in the winter and has fresh corn on the cob.)

I then measure 2 cups per freezer bag and try and get all the air I can out of it.  Then, Viola, I have fresh corn in the cold winter months.

Farm girl chapters

I

So I am thinking about joining the Mary Janes Farms Farm Girl Chapter.  its a group of women from your area who get together weekly, monthly whatever you decide and talk "farm girl".  You can earn bases, share ideas and recipes and just have a group o girls you can form relationships with.




It is like Girl Scouts for adults.  Sounds very interesting tome and actually very fun.  My sister and I were talking about it on the way to Iowa and we were actually talking of starting our own Chapter of the farm girls.  this way we can decide when we meet and etc.  But I am waiting on some more info first.  It sounds like such a great way to make new friends and friends who have the same interests as you in wanting to learn new thing about cooking, farming and crafts.  Here is the link if this is something you want to check out!
Farm Girl Chapters

Pickled Cukes

While in Iowa my aunt made her famous Pickled Cucumbers.  They were so good I thought I would share the recipe with you and tell you about the kick I added to it.

Pickled Cukes

1 Cup Water

1 Cup Vinegar

1 Cup Sugar

Boil top 3 ingredients together in pan on stove.  Meanwhile in large Mason Jar peel and slice 1-2 Cucumbers and 1 small onion.  Pour Boiling hot mixture over cucumbers in jar and add salt and lots of pepper.  Then for my own kick I added about a teaspoon of Crushed red pepper flakes.  It made them a good hot/sweet mixture and tasted so good.  You can serve these right away and reuse the liquid.  When you start getting low on cucumbers just slice another one and add to the liquid.  You might need to add some more salt and pepper but otherwise your good to go!

Iowa

Iowa was AMAZING!!!
It was so much fun to reminisce about times we used to spend there.  Family that would gather and just good times that seemed to never end.  I loved the fact that Kendall got to experience a lot of things I did when I would go there to visit my Grandpa.  We got to show her the Park that we would go to and play and have our family reunions.  She got to see the trails that we walked on with my Grandpa and we got to tell her lots of stories about past gatherings.

Showing Kendall al the trails through Oleson Park

Oleson Park in fort Dodge Iowa

My Aunts gorgeous kitchen.  it is so cute and farmhouse like.  I love it!

All of us after dinner the night we arrived.

Kendall and Aunt Nenie

I love this kid!

After going to Fort Dodge and visiting graves and going buy old houses and eating some food that can only be found there, we headed out to my favorite Aunts house in Lenox Iowa.  We spent time art their new home, visited places there that I had spent time at in my childhood and got to check out some new places also.

Me my sister and Aunt after dinner.

Iowa is beautiful even at night!

This is the new place we found.  The haunted Ax murder house!!

All in all the trip was great!  We got to remember times gone by and make some new memories, some I hope Kendall will share with her family someday.

S'mores Brownies

I'm back from a week traveling to Iowa.  It was a blast ...I will post pictures later but I had to share this FABULOUS brownie recipe with you.  Everyone (but Hillary) made it to dinner last night so I made a special treat for dessert from dinner.  It was rich, gooey, crunchy and best of all Chocolatey, and super easy!

S'mores Brownie

1 Pkg Brownie Mix 8x8 pan size ( I use Namaste Gluten Free mix.  Everyone in the family loves it better than the regular brownie mix now.  It's the only one I use!)

1/2 Bag of Miniature Marshmallows 

2 Hershey Candy Bars broken into pieces

1 Cup Miniature Graham Cracker Squares.

Mix brownie mix and bake according to directions Take out of oven and let cool for only 1-2 minutes while you put your oven to Broil.  Sprinkle marshmallows on top of brownie mix and then sprinkle Graham Crackers on top.  Put in Oven to "Broil" for 1-2 minutes (Depends on how dark you like your marshmallows) Take out of oven and sprinkle Hershey bars on top.  Delish!!  Caution... Wait for them to cool to cut.  They are Gooey!!

6 Chip Peanut butter Oatie Cookies

Since we are leaving for Iowa I was wanting to make some goodies for the trip.  Well these cookies are amazing!! 

 I tried to "healthy" them up in every way I could but you can't do much with 6 different kinds of chocolate chips.  


Heres the recipe.

6 Chip Peanut Butter Oaties

1 cup Butter

1 Cup Peanut Butter ( I used all natural PB)

1 C White Sugar

3/4 Cup Brown Sugar

1 T Vanilla

2 Eggs ( I used 1 small container of Greek yogurt instead of eggs)

Cream together then add

2 Cups Flour ( I mixed spelt flour and Whole Wheat flour)

1 Cup Oatmeal

Mix together and add to the Cream mixture

In separate bowl mix together 

2/3 C Dark Chocolate Chips

2/3 C Semi Sweet Chocolate Chips

2/3 C White Chocolate Chips

2/3 C Milk Chocolate Chips

2/3 C Peanut Butter Chips

1/3 C Butterscotch Chips

( I used the milk chocolate/ peanut butters swirled chips)

Mix into cookie mixture.  Heat oven to 350 degrees and drop by rounded spoonfuls onto cookie sheet.  Top with additional chips.

 Bake for 10-13 minutes or until edges are brown.  

Remove from oven and let cool.  These are delish!!