April?

So yesterday it was cold and snowy, and Mick had already turned off the gas to the pilot in the furnace. To keep the house (and Sarah) warm, we cook. Yesterday was pies...

Ma, we used some more canned squash (thanks for helping!), isn't it beautiful?


Sarah made some Little House lard pie crusts. Very nice. Mick tried to make a sort of shortbread crust


Two quarts of canned cubed squash makes four pies. On the two pies with a shortbread crust we sprinkled some of the shortbread...can I call it dough?...on the top. Great taste, great texture.


We tried a hot buttered rum type drink with the canning liquid again. This time almost no butter, and it was the best yet, and it has such a nice color.


Pretty decent pie.


So that was yesterday, and today is still cold, but at least we haven't seen snow yet. Nonetheless cold is cold, so today we made potato leek soup. We started by boiling some ham bones, then tossing in some diced potatoes. After those were cooked down we made some white sauce and added that to the soup to thicken, along with some parsley, thyme, salt, and garlic chives. Some larger diced potatoes went in then, and the chopped leeks. This is our first potato leek soup, and the first Sarah has ever had. It looks good!


Sarah tries out our new pepper mill


She put maybe a little too much in while I was trying to take the picture


And as usual, Roscoe gets the bones



Keep warm!

Squash Pie and Scrapple

Ma (Heidi), just thought you might like to know that we are using and enjoying the squash you helped Sarah can. We made two delicious pies with one quart, and we used your no-cutting pie crust, which is so easy to make, so flaky, and it isn't that much less pleasant than a butter or lard crust. Thanks! We used Spice Islands cinnamon, which is different from the others we've had. It has a stronger cinnamon flavor, and a great heat to it.

Also, the liquid in with the canned squash is intensely flavored and deliciously sweet, with a beautiful color

We used the liquid to make a hot buttered rum drink, which was also delicious. Sarah recommends it

And Mom and Dad (Laurel and David), we performed our scrapple extending procedure with the scrapple you gave us. First we diced an onion

and boiled it with some wheat bran

Then we cubed the scrapple to make it melt faster (yes, scrapple melts...weird) and tossed it in along with some wheat germ and herbs (mostly savory)

We boiled everything until it was homogeneous, then added some wheat flour and stone ground cornmeal to adjust the consistency,

greased some "molds" and poured the slop in

Sarah thinks they look like banana breads or something

We figured out that the scrapple before we got to it was 1/7th fat by weight. We extended that one pound block to three pounds of scrapple, increasing the fat only through the grain we added. Not bad! It slices up great with a cheese slicer

And it looks great in a skillet (thanks Ma!)

We had it with some eggs scrambled with the stem portion of a mess of leeks, very nice. And thanks, Amie, for the stein/mug, and thank you, Nancy, for the placemats.

It was good! As usual, Gerard wanted some.


Also, Gerard has taken to finishing Roscoe's meals...

...which distresses the puppy

...who expects me to do something about it.

Later that night, after the humans had a beautiful anniversary dinner, Gerard gave most of his dinner back, but Roscoe wasn't interested in it this time around.

We weren't either.

Yuck.