The all HoneyCrisp apple pie…So good!
Author Archives: jennifer
fall walk
we had tilly's best friend over this afternoon. i took the girls for a walk – which meant dressing up of course. they looked fabulous out in the sun on this gorgeous fall day.
they love each other so much. it's fun to be able to watch two little humans become such good friends and the ways the play.
the leaves fell off the trees this week.
i see that i haven't posted in a while. suddenly the fall is moving fast – and it's been a beautiful long warm fall. around here though we are waiting for the snow.
usually its quiet here in the off season. not this year though. i think the warm weather has kept everyone moving.
still baking
so tonight with a bunch of really ripe pears (had to bake tonight) and a pie crust ready to go in the fridge Tilly and I made Pear Almond Pizza from Moosewood Desserts. Pretty easy and really yummy. I would probably reduce the almond extract next time so the pears wouldn't have so much competition. (and yes – we've already eaten part of it – the cubs were on and i'm lucky i got a picture at all.)
autumn baking
so the eat local challenge is done. we did pretty well. i think everything we ate in our house over the course of the month was from within about 100 miles of where we live. we enjoyed lots of local wine, cheese and tortillas. items we will definitely keep around. all local veggies, fruit and trout. those fresh items are slowly becoming harder to get as the choice at farmer's market gets smaller every week.
i know as the month progressed it felt like i ate more lunches out. eating out wasn't held to the same standard. in general, i was hungrier without all the bread and pasta in my diet. eating was more fun in some ways – i was more appreciative of interesting flavors and required a lot less sweet to fill that dessert space.
with the month over i was excited to bake – with flour and all. we still went to the trouble of making a homemade pumpkin pie – with an actual sugar pumpkin we roasted and pureed. it was well worth it. i mostly followed the recipe from cook's illustrated. i used their filling ingredients and their crust recipe. i believe it is the best pumpkin pie we've ever had. i made homemade whip cream last night and tonight. so yummy!
halloween crafting
Halloween is a pretty big deal around our house. Tilly loves deciding on her costume, we love the decorations and it just has to be the best kids holiday. No toys expected, buckets of candy and days of playing dress-up in public.
We went to Michael's this weekend and we picked out the 'glitter bones' project from Martha Stewart. It's like she knows my kid – there is little Tilly likes more than body stuff and crafty glitter stuff – combining the two is a dream come true.
It's kind of a messy project – since glitter never really goes away. She's been pretty patient about waiting for me to do it with her. And the finished pieces are looking great.
We're going to use some of the smaller bones in invitations for our halloween party. I'll have to see if the post office will hand cancel…?
fall festivals
we love fall festivals. always have, always will. it's such a beautiful time of year to be outside (although we think every day is perfect here in paradise).
this weekend we took Tilly and a friend to Grand Junction for an apple festival at a historic farm there. they had a wonderful day – riding the kiddie train, petting the pigs and cows, chasing the chickens, helping make apple cider, and playing tons of kids games.
the best had to be the 'apple bobbing'. they have a version there with apples hanging on strings. the kids try to grab the apple in their mouth without using their hands. it's so funny and charming and perfectly fall.
we did end up eating chuck e cheese pizza for lunch which was a little sad for us adults but the girls had the best time!
must be time to knit
this month went so fast that i was sure i posted this on friday and i see that i last posted 5 days ago. did i really lose almost a whole week?
this week i was so excited to find a friend's yarn in a brand new, small, all local food store. i was beyond excited really and couldn't help but buy some. she makes the rest of us look bad when it comes to local.
she raises the sheep, shears the sheep, spins the wool. grows the garden, harvests and makes all natural dye. dyes the wool. besides that she's a really nice human and beautiful.
i noticed that when i got the yarn home – while excited to knit – i was really most excited to wind the yarn. it's so exciting to see the yarn spin up into this ready to use little ball – so much potential.
here's to an amazing fall!
fall evening
tilly and i and a few neighbor kids walked up to the store for hot cocoa tonight. it was beautiful out – although the air was really chill – we could have had some more clothes on.
today was picture day at school. jeremy took the shots this year. i helped. you know – shooting little kids is hard! he did a great job though. tilly is still wearing her photo day sweater (although a different dress). of course, her hair looked cuter all day than it did in the pic. the plight of a mom!
on my usual food note: jeremy made some excellent wax beans and a corn pudding tonight that was outstanding!
almost snowing
the first snow feels a little late…funny thing about a blog is that i can see that we had a couple inches here on our porch last year on september 22. this morning revealed the second snow up high. the first one was last week. jeremy hiked up the mountain this morning and took a bunch of pictures.
Mt. Daly really had a lot of snow.
Winter's coming – and around here everyone is pretty excited.
jeremy made the best all local chile rellnos last night and butternut squash soup. we're on the last week of the 'eat local' challenge. i'm still loving my coffee and wine. (although i noticed i've had a few more lunches out lately…)
halloween crafting
I finally stitched the "U" onto Tilly's Underdog sweater. She is most likely going to be Underdog for Halloween – although she still has plenty of time to change her mind. I think she likes to idea of being a super hero.
I like the sweater in general.
On another note – I'm really sad about the loss of our bunny. We only had her for a couple weeks but we had the responsibility of a baby creature and I feel like we didn't live up to our end of the bargain. No doubt – we did everything we could once she was sick, but it was really almost too late at that point. She was so happy hopping around our house, standing up to be picked up when we walked over to her cage – such personality so quickly for such a little creature…I'm sad she won't have a chance to grow.
2nd full site
ShineLineProductions is the company of Frank Shine – a local filmmaker who travels the world making ski movies, etc..
so the site's really maybe at 90% – we have a few tweaks to go, but it's really exciting. i've been working on this site since before i officially started at freelance (but we've had video compression, loading problems) but the site is in pretty good shape now.
not a regular day
i'm sorry to say that our bunny didn't make it. she was really sick and never started eating again or gained interest in anything. we are so sad to see her go.
regular day
so it's a regular day. i'm working – from home which is great. i've paid some bills, sent some invoices, worked on some websites…a day.
that's my coffee. with fewer drink choices in our 'eat local' month i really think a lot about my coffee and wine. thanks goodness we kept coffee. without diet coke it's nice to have something. and i definitely look forward to my wine come evening. you'd think i'd be drinking a lot more water (we have really good water here), but not so much – a lot more coffee though.
the bunny is next to me in her cage on the floor. i'm giving her water from a little plastic syringe and food three times a day. she's actually looking a little better today, but still not feeding herself. let's hope she makes that next leap!
home sick
not me…the bunny. she's so tiny and she's lost weight so we are doing everything we can to get her healty…
local dinner
so the local dinner was eaten – and we forgot to take any pictures – oy! so i took a few after's with my phone – so pathetic, but there it is. (the kitchen was a site to be seen afterwards so i'll share that – although it was probably a lot worse around 4pm).
the couples who came each brought local wine – the consideration was beyond sweet! this local eating is our crazy deal for the month and the
thoughtfulness of our friends was very endearing. it's not easy to get local wine (and we had our
dinner on sunday when you can't even buy wine in our goofy state). and one friend even brought fresh italian parsley from her own garden. so generous!
the evening was filled with good wine, excellent food, great conversation and some really well behaved kids. it's pretty amazing when they all play together (for a while at least).
we drank four bottles of local wine. and people had refills. i took that as a good sign for the local wine. it was pretty amazing to eat so much food, be so full, enjoy each glass of wine and know that it was all from the state of colorado. good job state!
i picked up some amazing dahlias at farmer's market on saturday too – grown in the grand valley of colorado. this little picture does not do them justice. i'll try to get a real one.
pieces of the menu: cinderella pumpkin soup, corn fritters, rosemary trout, anasazi beans, eggplant au gratin, turban squash stuffing, roasted blue potatoes, tomato and roasted pepper salad and for dessert i made honey ice cream with fresh pears
saturday
this morning was farmer's market – we bought everything of course. we are having some friends over for an all 'local' dinner tomorrow night. jeremy has been cooking on and off today and there's still food in the oven (it's 11:30pm). i'm excited! he even made a tomato dish I like – that's a miracle.
after the market we took tilly and a friend out for a walk. tilly wanted to go on a 'nature hike' with these small journals we made so she could glue stuff in. it's funny to watch the things she looks for vs. the things i look for. i spend time looking for perfect yellow aspen leaves. she finds a half eaten green leaf and can't wait to glue it into her book. they both glued in snail shells too – using a glue stick. we''ll see how well that holds up.
their favorite part of the hike was the caterpillar. we found a black fuzzy caterpillar that ali named gabriella. they carried it all the way out of the woods and to a playground we went to visit. they took continuous turns handing it back and forth. i was really just thrilled that they were excited to play with it (and not grossed out at all by the 'bug').
snack!
so one of the hard parts of eating local has been no snacks – no potato chips, pretzels, etc… i like to snack. i've eaten a lot of apples with our peanut-honey smush and thank goodness for tortillas and goat cheese ( i am the only human who won't happen to lose weight during this month). but today i remembered that jeremy had bought a bag of local popcorn a few weeks ago. so i followed the directions at instructables today and made homemade microwave popcorn with southern colorado blue corn, sedalia ghee and utah salt. so good! and in a lot of ways better than actual microwave popcorn – no weird after taste or strange filmy feeling in your mouth. an actual snack – so exciting!
food life
so i almost cooked tonight – which is remarkable with our 'eating local'.
i kind of figured with all of the actual cooking it was taking to pull off eating local that i wouldn't cook this month (which wouldn't be that different than a normal month).
but jeremy was out shooting late so i baked acorn squash and made a corn bread/pudding thing. it was pretty good.
what i loved was that i found it the recipe at allrecipes.com. they have a great search feature where you can put in some ingredients you would like to find in a recipe and ingredients you wouldn't. so i could put in cornmeal and eggs, but no flour. with our limited choices this month this search feature is perfect!
l’shana tova
good food day
so the pie…tilly had three pieces, i had two, jeremy's been eating out of the tine – we gave a piece to our friend kara – it's a really good pie! jeremy thinks it may be the best apple pie he's ever had (no offense taken of course).
so the other nice thing we picked up in Grand Junction was wine. Colorado, like most states it seems now, has a growing wine industry, with local grapes and local wineries. it was fine to stop at the different wineries – taste and buy.
it was interesting too, that some are really making wine and some are making novelty fruity stuff.
tonight we had spaghetti squash gratin, anasazi beans, and blue cornmeal pancakes. dinner was excellent!