Bored

It is Sunday in the mountains. The weather is overcast and there is rain in the forecast. The football games that our heroine can get on her cable TV suck. To help calm her boredom she runs on her treadmill, finds an Indian Jones movie on TV and heads into the kitchen.


She starts out by making a pumpkin roll for the office. She makes the cake and sets it to cool while she gets the filling ready.

In no time at all she has the pumpkin roll ready to go into the refrigerator.

Next she decides that she really wants some peanut butter cookies. The only recipe she has that does not require chilling for 2 hours is the one for peanut butter blossoms. So she gets out her bag of Hershey Kisses and peels 2 dozen of them.

While the oven is preheating for the cookies she makes the dough and rolls it into balls.

When the cookies were done she put the kisses onto each one and put them on a rack to cool.

As our heroine finished the cookies she realized it was time to start dinner for her and her tenant. She had previously thawed out, peeled, cooked and chopped up a pound of shrimp.

She then got out some garlic and one of her favorite kitchen toys. You place a clove of garlic in the yellow rubber thing, press down and roll it a few times and your garlic is peeled. Then you grate it in the bowl and it purees the garlic super fast.

The pureed garlic is ready to go in the pot. Our heroine made garlic shrimp and grits for dinner.

Once the garlic is pureed and the shrimp is cooked the meal comes together in about 20 minutes. It is sooooooo good.

Of course all the playing has it price and in this case it was a good amount of dirty dishes.

Our heroine donned her rubber gloves and got right to cleaning up the mess. She is good at this.

Still bored but at least with a full stomach and a clean kitchen she looked at all the tomatoes on her counter.

She got out her new canning book that her wonderful daughter got her for Mother's Day. Our heroine read that if she peeled the tomatoes and cored them she could make some crushed tomatoes and then freeze them for future use.

She put all the peeled tomatoes in a pot, crushed them and them simmered them for a few minutes.

Once they had simmered she measured out how much she had. Added the required amount of lemon juice, put them in a tupperware and froze them.

All that done she cleaned up the tomato dishes, got a glass of wine and sat down to watch her favorite show.

Pumpkin Spice Bars

I got the recipe for these in the mail many years ago,,,many years ago. Every time I make them I get rave reviews. What is really nice is they are fast and easy to make.


This time around I was going to a party and was asked to bring a finger dessert. I assembled most of the ingredients on the counter. I say most because the can of pumpkin is not visible nor is the oil. I don't think they eggs are there either.

For the crust you will need:

2 cups graham cracker crumbs
7 tablespoons butter, melted.
1/4 cup sugar.

Preheat oven to 350. Line a 15 x 11 pan with foil. Mix all the crust ingredients together. Using the bottom of a measuring cup evenly pack the crumbs over the foil. Bake for about 6 minutes, or until fragrant. Let cool completely. (I don't always wait that long)

Here is my crust cooling.

While waiting for the crust to cool I took a picture of my favorite kitchen tool, my mix-master. If it was not for this little gem it would take me a lot longer to get some things done. Now while I love my mixer dearly and have had it and its twin (for the boat) for about 5 years I have never named her. Any suggestions would be welcome. Who knows if its a good name you would get the credit.

For the filing:

In a medium bowl mix together the following:

2 cups flour
2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt.

Mix well and set aside.

In a large bowl beat together:

4 eggs
1 2/3 cup sugar
1 can (15 oz) canned pumplin puree
1 cup vegetable oil.

Once this is all mixed well, mix in the flour. Pour the pumpkin mixture over the cooled crust. Spread evenly. Bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes. The filling should be pulling slightly away from the sides of the pan. A toothpick inserted will come out clean. Let cool completely.

Baked and cooling.

Once cooled frost the bars in the pan with a can of Cream Cheese frosting. Once frosted you can use a fork to make way lines in the frosting. Make sure to wipe the fork clean after each pass. Once frosted remove from the pan using the foil and cut into serving size pieces.

Labor Day Weekend

For our Heroine, Labor weekend really started on Thursday August 30th. She fed her tenant, helper and dog sitter dinner. They had Southwestern seasoned, oven roasted chicken thighs, scalloped potatoes, broccoli and bruschetta made with tomatoes and basil from our heroine's garden.

After dinner our heroine put out all her fall decorations but neglected to take any photos.

On Friday when she got home from work there was a message on her machine from her neighbor Nan who invited our heroine for dinner. She accepted and had a great time. When she got home the full moon was just coming up thru the trees.

On Saturday our heroine and her neighbor Nan went for a short, 2-mile hike. There were numerous small waterfalls along the trail as it went thru the woods.

The heroine's best girl Liliuokalani was having a grand time racing up and down the trail and running through all the streams. She got very wet and loved to shake near her mom.

Nan and I stopped at a bench near one of he small waterfalls for a water break.

Our heroine wonders why she let anyone take her picture with her fanny pack turned the wrong way. While creating this blog entry our heroine also realized that the date on the camera is off.

After awhile the trail comes out into a pasture. At the top of the hill in the pasture our heroine found a trail marker and proclaimed "That way leads back to the car!" Again our heroine has her fanny pack turned the wrong way.

The trail went through the pasture and back into the woods. At a bench under a tree our heroine and Nan marveled at the size of this tree and how old it must be.

On Sunday, September 2nd, while our heroine was moving firewood Kelekona and Morgan engaged in a game of tag,,dog style. Kelekona runs around at a slower than normal speed and Morgan hurls his 25 pound body at her 57 pound body while they are both growling and barking. Then they take off in separate directions until they literally run into each other again.

After a few rounds of tag all three needed to catch their breath.

By Sunday afternoon there was no more firewood in the driveway near the garage doors.

There are now 1 1/2 new rows of wood behind the woodshed.

Since this wood will not be used until the winter of 2013-2014 our heroine covered it with a large tarp and weighted it down. Hopefully the pieces of wood on top will hold the tarp down during the 50-80 mph gusts of wind during winter storms.

Monday was a holiday. Our heroine went up to her sewing room to work on a project. A white and brown blur went past her window and then landed on the branch in center of this photo. It was a beautiful hawk. Our heroine raced down the 3 flights of stairs, got her camera and raced back up the three flights of stairs. As she was focusing on the hawk it took off. DAMN!

Later on Monday afternoon our heroine baked two loaves of Peanut Butter Streusel Topped Cream-Cheese Banana Nut Bread. One loaf is for her co-workers. The other will go to her favorite doctor next week. Our heroine had to remove a bottle of vodka from her freezer to make room for the doctor's loaf of bread. I hope they appreciate the sacrifice.

Our heroine's last project on Monday was to make some Haupia, also for her co-workers. Haupia is a coconut milke pudding from Hawaii.

Late August At Home

The last weekend in August has arrived and our heroine is closing in on the end of her outside work, thankfully.

When she got home from work on Friday it was pouring rain so outside work was not in the question.

Previously she had sanded and patched the front door trim with some wood putty. Now she sanded the trim and got it ready for a new coat of paint.

A little while later it looked like Miss Bit (our late Border Collie) had never tried to chew her way out of the house one day. Notice in the background is a large can of polyurethane. Our heroine also put a coat of that on all the tongue and groove wood on the porch.

Those projects done our heroine dragged a 50-pound bag of dog food to the laundry where it need to be put into plastic buckets for ease of serving. Morgan and Kele have learned that hanging around this process is a good thing as somehow a few pieces of kibble always seem to miss the buckets and hit the floor.

Saturday dawned beautiful and sunny. Our heroine fire up the lawn mower and cut the front yard.

Then she went down the driveway and between all the bushes,,,,at least to the best of her ability.

Next she went out to the wood pile and got ready to move more of the wood over to the other side of the house.

She moved a load of wood and started a new pile since the woodshed is full.

When she quit for the day she had her faithful companion Tonto (the tractor) all loaded up and ready for the next weekend.

Being quite intelligent our heroine would move a load from one side of the house to the other and instead of an empty tractor bucket going for a new load to be moved, she would stop at the front door and unload some wood so she would be ready for the cooler nights. This wood came out of the wood shed.

Sunday was another sunny day. Our heroine usually does not mow, run the weedeater or the tractor on Sundays. So while she was puttering about in the house Kele went out to work on her suntan.

Soon she was joined by her best friend Morgan.

It was a great weekend.