Category Archives: Uncategorized

By this time of the year, just about all the flowers are tired, really tired. But, I was able to pull together one last bouquet from what is left in the cutting garden. It really may be the last one of the season. It’s different kinds of dahlias, zinnias, and some alstroemeria that I boughtContinue reading “The last of the cutting garden…”

In our basement, some of the walls were drywalled and painted when we bought the house, but others were not, and we have a lot of walls that are cinder block that we have painted with dry loc paint. My husband has wanted to hang the drywall because the exposed insulation just sucks the lightContinue reading “The Ancient Basement–Our first adventure in dry wall”

I have been making cinnamon rolls for years. The boys used to take them for boy scout camping trips and we brought them to all the boys’ regattas. Chris and I made hundreds of pans of them to raise money for his trip to Europe when he was in 7th grade. In fact, they wereContinue reading “Apple Pecan Cinnamon Rolls”

We are starting the process of finishing out our basement to give us more entertaining space and space that is easily accessible for our parents because there aren’t any stairs. We are going for a 1930’s English Pub look. The first thing we did was find some really cool antique doors in Toledo, OH. WeContinue reading “The Ancient Basement”

I have been making this squash casserole for YEARS, but have never taken the time to write down the proportions. I wanted to put a bunch in the freezer for later in the year when you can’t get the same yummy yellow squash that you can get right now so I went to our localContinue reading “Huge batch of Squash Casserole”

When I was little, my mom used to make delicious tomato juice. (I remember picking tomatoes by the wheelbarrow load, so she had to do something with them.) She put peppers and onions in it to add a little extra flavor. I started my batch over the weekend by cooking tomatoes (mostly San Marzano), bellContinue reading “Spicy Bloody Mary Mix”

Plums have such a short season, but I do love them–especially the gorgeous colors. I bought some organic purple plums at Costco last week. I made this cake over the weekend–a double batch–one for us and one for the freezer. I had about 7 plums left that really needed to be used, so I amContinue reading “Original Plum Torte by Marian Burros”

I planted San Marzano tomatoes this year to ensure that I would have plenty of tomatoes to make homemade sauce and canned tomatoes. They are living up to their billing and I made the first batch of sauce today. Unfortunately, they still aren’t coming in all at the same time, so I have had toContinue reading “Roasted Garlic and Onion Marinara Sauce”

I started some pepper plants from seed. The package said that they were poblano pepper seeds. It became obvious pretty quickly that they were NOT poblano pepper plants. I think that they are pepperoncini…I think…I hope…. Since we don’t use many of those, (but I guess we will have to figure out how to useContinue reading “Pickle making mania”

We have friends and family coming this weekend, so I put together a fun summery table. I started with a blue gingham cloth and then decided to use some really colorful candle holders which drove the rest of the decisions. Based on the candleholders, I decided to use some little royal blue buckets for flowersContinue reading ““Picnic” Table”