I won!

Today's Housewife hosts a recipe swap every weekend and I often try to participate.

A couple weeks ago, they tied a giveaway to their swap and yesterday these Halloween cookie cutters arrived in my mail.



The hilarious part is that I didn't even remember they were having a giveaway. I went back to see if any more participants had added recipes and happened to see my name as the winner.

Thanks so much, Today's Housewife!

Garden bounty

Julianne really got into gardening this year. She was particularly interested in flowers and herbs.

I bought her a few varieties of basil seed-regular, cinnamon, purple, and lime. My girls love pesto so she was motivated by that to grow lots of basil hoping that she'd get pesto once in a while. I only managed to make it once this summer. I intended to make more, put it on my mental to-do list several times, but it never seemed to happen.

Then Friday came. We heard there was a frost/freeze warning for Friday night. Funny, isn't it, how I was able to fit in something I had managed to put off so many times before? I had her go harvest her basil. I told her to cut the main stem and bring 'em in.

That girl grew a ton of basil.

She didn't cut much of the lime, purple, or cinnamon basil, mostly just the regular. She stood the plants in baskets and had two half-bushel baskets full.



These are the first five jars of pesto I made Friday night before running out of Parmesan. After the quiz, we stopped and bought more so we could finish. Clarence and Julianne had placed the basil in buckets of water in the basement to hold it until we could continue. It worked perfectly. Altogether, we got about 19 or 20 half-pint jars of pesto. We vacuum sealed them as we went and popped them into the freezer.

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Then there is this. Looks appetizing, yes? I know, I know, they aren't pretty like that.

We grew golden beets this year. I decided to try them in the crockpot for Sunday lunch. I was already making Stephanie's crock pot pesto fish recipe. [As a side note-you must make this recipe. She is so right about fish in the CP. It works SO well, I find it hard to believe.] I thought it'd be great to have the beets ready for lunch, too. Not my original idea, though. Clarence had tried it before and told me it worked. Thankfully, it worked in the same amount of time the fish needed.

I fished them out with tongs, cut the ends off, let them cool for a minute or two, and slipped the skin off. I scraped the skin off a few of them but mostly didn't have to do much scraping.

We love beets here. We will definitely be doing this again.

Look at that golden yumminess. Aren't they pretty?

Our friends, adoptive grandparents to the girls, surprised us with some fresh lima beans at church, too. We tried growing them this year but didn't do well with them. None of us had ever eaten them fresh before but the girls just love the dried ones in things. We steamed them when we got home and enjoyed their garden bounty along with our own.

I just re-read this post and thought I should clarify. The fish isn't hidden under those beets. I used one crockpot for the fish, one for the beets.

Oh, and it never did frost here Friday night.

Brag Alert

Yesterday was the first Bible quiz of the year for the girls. Quizzing is such an important ministry to our family. What else makes teenagers passionate about studying God's word?

Since our girls were the only two from our church attending the quiz, they quizzed as a two person team. They do "jump quizzing" and a two person team automatically puts you at a disadvantage. But they were fine with that. They love to quiz.

I'll try to explain jump quizzing a bit. Two teams sit in chairs facing each other. Each quizzer is sitting on a "seat", which is placed on the seat of the chair. The quiz seats are wired to a box equipped with lights and a buzzer. As a quizzer jumps off the seat, the buzzer sounds and the box lights up, giving the order in which the quizzers got off their seats. Only the first four off the seats show on the box and have a chance to give an answer.

The quizmaster, timer, and scorekeeper sit behind a table at the end of the quizzers, facing the box at the opposite end. If a quizzer jumps before the quizmaster is finished reading a question, it is a pre-jump and the quizzer has 20 seconds to complete the question, then another 20 seconds to answer. As the kids become better quizzers, more pre-jumping takes place. It gets pretty intense.

If a quizzer answers five questions in a round, they have "quizzed out" and have to sit out the remaining questions. Julianne makes it her goal to quiz out in every round. She didn't manage it in every round yesterday but she came close. That, of course, left Allison alone against the other team-one of the disadvantages of a two person team.

They lost one round out of four which gave them second place as a team.

It's a traveling trophy, which is why Julianne is holding the little plate. Our church mounts the plate on a wooden plaque in the entryway.

The blue ribbon is a quote ribbon, earned by saying all the specific memory verses for the month. (This month there were only four.) They must be quoted verbatim, with the references, to get a ribbon. The green ribbon is awarded to every quizzer who quizzes out in at least one round.

The girls also competed in individual competitions. Julianne took first place in the Young Teen Veteran division, Allison took first in the Young Teen Rookie division. Julianne doesn't have her medal in the picture but Allison pinned hers to her shirt.

They both work hard to do well but are good sports when they lose. They make us so proud.

Brag is over. We now return you to our regular schedule.

Please pass Dad's favorite

Over at Today's Housewife the weekend recipe swap topic is Dad's (meaning hubby's) favorite.

My husband is probably the least picky person I know. When I met him and he was cooking for himself, if a dish didn't turn out very well he'd eat it anyway. "Food or fuel", he'd say. He figured he needed to eat whether it tasted good or not. I've never acquired that skill, to eat something I find distasteful.

He never complains but also seldom raves about a particular dish. There are a few things he enjoys enough to ask for specifically and this cookie recipe is one of them.

I think I first made these cookies when my oldest was a Kindergartner. Our curriculum was Five in a Row and we "rowed" a book called Grandfather's Journey. I looked on the FIAR message boards for recipes to go with the book and found a link to this one. It has been his favorite ever since. The texture of this cookie is different from any other chocolate chip cookies I've ever made. The original recipe can be found here (2nd on page). My slightly changed version is below.

Japanese Chocolate Chip Cookies


1 3/4 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1 egg
1/8 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup walnuts, chopped
1/2 cup chocolate chips
1/2 cup raisins, seedless


Mix the flour and baking soda, then set the mixture aside. In a bowl, mix the butter and brown sugar until fluffy, then beat in the egg and vanilla.

Mix the flour mixture into the batter. Add the walnuts, chocolate chips, and raisins and mix lightly.

Drop from a teaspoon onto an ungreased pan. Flatten with a fork dipped in flour. Bake at 320 F. for 15-20 minutes.

My changes: I don't keep cake flour on hand, all-purpose works just fine. I think butter, rather than margarine, makes a huge flavor difference. I slightly mound my packed measuring cup of brown sugar, rather than measuring out an additional tablespoon. I'm lazy like that.

At long last

This summer, when we were picking blueberries and blackberries, Allison wanted to make a pie. I was making her do "summer school spelling" at the time (her spelling tests all year had been less than stellar) and wouldn't let her bake until she successfully finished her remedial spelling work. One of her lists carried over into the new school year and became a source of frustration to both of us. She finally mastered it last week. The berries were waiting in the freezer.

I'm not much of a pie maker. I really like pie but rolling crust into a circle that will actually fit the pie pan, isn't too thin, and holds together as you work with it seems a little beyond me. The beauty of youth is that Allison isn't intimidated by all those problems. She just forges ahead, sure of a good outcome. She made her crust completely with whole wheat pastry flour. It didn't handle too well, but she just got a dish of water and "glued" where it wanted to break. No problem.



She used a combination of blackberries and blueberries in a recipe out of my old Betty Crocker cookbook.

Since the crust was proving difficult, I suggested she might want to try a lattice-style top crust, rather than a regular top crust. She took her strips of crust, gave them a little twist, and put them on top of her pie.

We forgot to take a picture when it came out of the oven, but managed to remember before we ate any.

It was really delicious. And I bet she'll always be able to spell villain, resurrection, Fahrenheit, inseparable, plagiarism, etc.-at least I hope so!

Soup recipe swap

Life as Mom is hosting a soup recipe swap today. My house is freezing since I have so far refused to turn on the furnace and have been too lazy to start a fire in the woodstove. This makes soup recipes sound quite enticing.

I'm sharing a recipe I got several years ago from my brother. He's a great cook, much more gourmet than I am, and willing to put more effort into his cooking and baking than I am.

That said, this recipe isn't difficult at all. Since I like to serve soup frequently in the colder months, I am happy to have this yummy one in the rotation.


Corn Chowder


1/2 pound bacon slices (see note below)
1 medium onion, chopped
1/2 cup celery, chopped
2 tablespoons flour, all-purpose
4 cups milk
1 can creamed corn
1 can corn
1 pound potato, diced and boiled (or used canned)
paprika (absolutely necessary, according to my brother's notes)
parsley sprigs, snipped (he never bothers, neither do I)


1. Fry bacon til crisp. (Note: He recommended Sizzlean. The real bacon can get too chewy in the soup. I don't ever see "Sizzlean" anymore so I use a turkey bacon. It gets a little chewy, too, but I still like it.) Drain. Reserve 3 T. drippings, cook onion and celery in drippings until tender.
2. Remove from heat. Stir in flour, blend well, and cook until bubbly and just beginning to brown. Remove from heat and blend in milk. Heat to boiling, stirring constantly. Boil and stir one minute.
3. Blend in corn, potatoes, salt and pepper. Heat through. Add bacon. Sprinkle each serving with parsley and paprika.
4. 6-10 servings.

Hope you enjoy it as much as my family does!

Can you identify it?

This is another Shipshewana purchase.

Do you know what it is?



I don't either.

Actually, I know what it is for, and how to use it, but I have no idea what it is called.

I think I'll probably call it "that pear thing" or something equally profound.

Here is Clarence giving a demo on how to use it.

I did it the opposite way. I took out the stem first, then the seeds.

I wasn't particulary anxious to try this tool. I figured my paring knife was adequate for the job. And it is adequate. This pear thing, though, actually allowed me to go faster and waste less of the fruit than I do when I use the paring knife.

Plus, to use my knife, I always have to quarter the pear. Another extra step that doesn't seem like a big deal but does have an impact when you are doing any quantity of pears.

I was surprised at how much I liked using this.We'll probably be buying another one the next time we go to Shipshewana so we can have a "his and hers".

Too bad they don't come in pink.