Good-Bye Summer, Hello Winter

This is the sight that greeted us at dawn this morning.

Hmmm, methinks it's time we mulched the strawberries.

And (sigh) put the deck furniture away.

Milk Run

Lots of errands and miscellaneous things to do today. The kind of day that leaves you feeling like you didn't accomplish diddly squat. But if truth were told, I did get a lot done; it just wasn't necessarily the "fun" stuff I wanted to get to!

I was grumping earlier this morning about our fall color season this year not being as nice (or long) as it usually is. This, I'm thinking, is in part due to the wind storm we had a week and a half ago. And we've been lacking in moisture also (lots of gray days but no significant rainfall), if that has any bearing on coloration.

You can see the water is low in this stream bed. Even though peak colors are past, this sure is still a purdy scene.

One of my errands today was to go up to the farm to replenish our supply of milk and cream. These are random shots taken on the way . . . through the windshield as I was driving. (Don't worry, I was going slowly and there was no other traffic around.)

It was a very, heavy , gray day.

The leaves they are a'comin' down.

Getting close to the farm.

I am so grateful for and appreciative of the area we live in. I love it.

How 'Bout Some Meat Pie?

Meat Pie? Criminy, that could be just about anything! I gotta come up with a better name for this dish. Somebody with more creative juices flowing than I have right now will have to suggest something more attractive . . . and catchy.

Let's just get into it and see where it leads. Okay?

MEAT PIE (NAME HOPEFULLY TO BE IMPROVED UPON SOON)

1 lb. ground beef
5 oz. 1/2 & 1/2
1/2 cup dry bread crumbs
1/2 teaspoon garlic salt
1/3 cup diced onions
1/2-3/4 cup pizza sauce
1 cup shredded cheese (half cheddar, half mozzarella)
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
1 tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese

Put ground beef in a medium mixing bowl and add 1/2 & 1/2, bread crumbs, garlic salt and onions. Mix well.

Press meat mixture into the bottom and up the sides of a 9" pie pan.

Bake uncovered for 20 minutes in a 350° oven.

Drain off excess fat. (Our dog loves when I make this because she gets the drippings over her dog food.)

Spread pizza sauce evenly over meat.

Sprinkle with shredded cheeses, Parmesan and oregano.

Bake another 10 minutes until cheese is melted.

Cut into desired slices and serve.

Notes about recipe:

Once I didn't have any bread crumbs, so added about 1/2 cup of diced parboiled potatoes. It was good.

In place of the pizza sauce, you could use ketchup or tomato sauce. I just like the little extra zing the pizza sauce gives.

I've always used a mixture of shredded cheddar and mozzarella cheeses. Today I used all cheddar because I bought a new brand of mozzarella (bad choice) and do not care for the flavor of it . . . at all. Didn't want to chance ruining the meat pie so didn't use it. But now I know I definitely like the mixture of the two cheeses rather than all cheddar.

My husband who LOVES regular, old meat loaf doesn't like this meat pie as much as regular, old meat loaf. On the other hand, I'm not crazy about meat loaf, but really, really like this meat pie. What does this prove? Darned if I know.

If you try it, I hope it turns your crank.

A Fun Fill-In

Yesterday Donna over at Quiet Life included in her post a little six line fill-in quiz. She asked her readers to leave their answers in her comments section at the end of the post. It struck me as a fun thing to do, and I enjoyed reading all the comments she got in response.

So call me a big, ol' copy cat, but I'm offering the challenge to all of you to fill in the blanks today under my comments.

1. My car ________________________.
2. ______________________ is coming up next.
3. Lately, things seem ________________________.
4. ____________________ is one of my favorite "hiding" places.
5. What happened _________________________?
6. _________________ is not impossible!

I'll start the ball rolling by being the first one to list what I filled in.

Have fun!

A Most Un-Christmas Cookie

Our cookie jar is empty, it's a rainy day and our daughter is stopping over this afternoon . . . perfect reasons to bake her favorite cookies.

Every time I make Molasses Apple Cookies, I'm reminded of when she was in kindergarten and came home one day shortly before Christmas Vacation and announced excitedly that they were having a party and she needed to bake cookies.

She then produced a note from her teacher asking if we would be able to supply some Christmas cookies for their party in a couple of days.

I asked Chicken Mama (was she Chicken Baby then?) what kind of cookie she would like to make thinking she would pick one of our traditional holiday cookies.

"Mowasses Appo!" she gleefully exclaimed.

"Uh . . . well, Sweetie . . . how about if we make some Sugar Cookies with red and green sprinkles? Or Thumbprints with a little piece of marachino cherry on top?"

She didn't throw a fit (fits were frowned on in our house) but she was terribly disappointed that she wasn't going to get to take her very favorite cookies for the party.

Oh, what the heck, I thought. It's her party. So what if Molasses Apple Cookies don't look very festive.

And so in a few days time off to school she went (pleased as punch) with her little box of very un-Christmas looking cookies.

End of story . . . beginning of recipe.

MOLASSES APPLE COOKIES

1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup molasses
1 egg
1 tablespoon lemon juice
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon cloves
1/2 teaspoon ginger
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup raisins
1 cup finely chopped apples

Cream butter, sugar and molasses. Beat in egg. Add lemon juice and blend well. Mix in dry ingredients. Add raisins and chopped apples and mix until well blended.

Drop onto greased baking sheets. Bake at 350° for about 10 minutes. (Don't overbake, these are moist cookies.) Cool on racks and store in an air-tight container.

Mmmm, very moist and very delicious. Especially with a glass of cold milk!

A couple of other notes about these cookies:

I cut the recipe out of a newspaper many years ago and the first time I made them, halfway through the mixing up process, I discovered . . . whoopsie . . . there was NO FLOUR listed in the ingredients! So I just kept adding flour until it looked right. Happily, they worked the first time around.

The original recipe didn't call for raisins but I think they're a super-yummy addition. Of course, if you have a strange abhorrence of raisins like my son-in-law does, you may leave them out. (Before adding raisins to any cookie recipe, I always soak them in boiling water first to plump 'em up a bit.)

Now through winter is a great time to make Molasses Apple Cookies because they are so moist that in the humid summertime, they tend to gum-up and stick together. They still taste fine but you end up pulling one big glop of a cookie chunk out of the jar rather than an individual one.

My daughter's tastes have become more sophisticated now and I'm sure she'd never dream of making these cookies to serve at holiday time, but they still rank right up there with her most favorites taste-wise!

Ramblings

Or maybe the title of this post should be "Mumblings." I don't seem to be operating on all four cylinders these past few days. Don't know if it's the radical change in weather that has finally arrived or the after effects of Monday's wind storm or just generally too much to do that has thrown me off. I've been feeling really tired and could probably blame it on a couple of little physical things or a couple of little emotional things. Take your pick.

Daughter and son-in-law had an impromptu dinner with us last night which was really nice. Sat for a short time afterwards, talked and got caught up with each other. It was early when they headed home so I managed to get into bed at a decent time. Tried to read but kept falling asleep. ("Clunk." Sound of book hitting me in the face.) Fine, I said, I'll zonk out, get a good night's sleep and get up at five to steal some time in my quilt studio. I slept so soundly that I didn't even hear the 6 o'clock alarm Roy had set. Even though the sandman was trying valiantly to keep me from escaping, I dragged myself out around 6:20 when I heard Roy making coffee. Bright-eyed, busy-tailed and ready to go I was. Not.

As of this morning, there were still 150-200 residences without power from the wind storm this past Monday. The biggest hang-up in restoring service is the fact that so many electrical poles snapped.

Roy's been spending his week cutting all the trees that blew down in the storm, piling the brush on our flat-bed trailer and hauling it to the open field where we can eventually burn it.

All that is left in my garden are onions and potatoes in the ground and cherry tomatoes and sweet peppers under cold frames.

Some of the peppers have turned red, some are halfway there, and some are stubbornly refusing to let go of their green color. I want to use them to make a winter's worth of Stuffed Peppers for the freezer, but I don't know how much longer I should hold out waiting for them all to turn color. We both much prefer the flavor of the peppers when they're red.

The tops of the onions haven't dried off as much as I'd like to see. Monday's winds knocked everything flat and now with the cool weather, I don't know what more progress we'll see with them.

The end of the garden . . . where did this summer go?

I am loving this "it's truly fall" feeling weather. Tuesday night was our first killing frost. All week we've had a small fire in the wood stove each morning and then another one at night before bed. Cozy, cozy, cozy. It will be good to get to bed early again tonight. If I can wait that long. (Ya-a-a-w-w-n.)