Celebration

This last weekend was very busy and lots of fun.  Rich's sister and all her kids and grandkids came into town to celebrate Rich's dad's 90th birthday.  Rich' sister has 2 grandsons that are just a little bit older than Mary.  So she had fun with her cousins.  On Thursday we all met at an all you can eat Chinese buffet here in town.  Rich had to go to work after that and Mary and I joined the cousins for a game of miniature golf.  It was a warm afternoon and we almost melted but we had fun.  The younger kids went on the bumper boats to cool off.  The next day we all met at a seafood restaurant and then went for a bowling.  Rich's mom, me and the littles all played together.  Mary ended up winning!  On Saturday we went to a local park and had our family picture taken.  It was great to get us all together for a picture.  That night we went to a really nice local restaurant for a big party.  There was family and friends there.  Mary had so much fun and we all did.  Her little heart has been so excited for Grandpa's party.  She had so much fun shopping for the party decorations and helping Rich and I setting things up at the restaurant.  We had a wonderful evening of family memories, good food and lots of fun!  We are thankful for Dad Cardwell's long life and the good father and grandfather that he has been to us all.  Without more ado, I will post the videos and photos of our celebration.

Here is the link to the video: http://youtu.be/KBHwtiOAAdI

Here is the link to Ethan and Mary Dancing: http://youtu.be/K7SbE2l4KPY

Mamey Sapote Bread

Remember that wonderful Mamey Sapote fruit that our friend sent us that I talked about in the post before this one.  Well, Rich wanted to try to use some in a sweet bread.  So we did!

 

Ingredients

• 2 & 1/2 cups flour (I use unbleached white, but you can use any wheat flour you like)
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cup sugar (I like white, but you can use brown)
• 1 cup full-fat sour cream (I love Daisy Sour Cream because it has no artificial ingredients)
• 2 large eggs
• 1 ripe mamey zapote (about 2 cups of ripe fruit, give or take) You can substitute with bananas
• 3/4 cups of softened, salted butter (1 & 1/2 sticks) do not use margarine. Substitute with olive oil if needed
• 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract

 

Directions

• Preheat the oven to 350F
• Blend the sour cream, eggs, butter, vanilla and zapote until smooth
• Sift the flour and baking powder
• Add the sugar and salt to the flour mixture
• Stir in the zapote mixture to the flour until smooth
• Butter and flour a large bread pan (or two smaller ones)
• Pour the batter till it’s 3/4 of the way to the top
• Bake for one hour, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out *mostly* clean (a few crumbs/wet marks are OK)
• Let cool for 15 minutes on the counter before turning out of the pan
• Serve with butter
• Enjoy!

This is a great recipe.  The bread was wonderful.  Here is some of the bread with homemade apple butter on it.  It was good, but it even tasted better with real butter melted on it.  When I first tasted it, it had a chocolate flavor and when I served it to Mary with only telling her it was Mamey Sapote bread, she said after her first taste, "Wow, brownies!"  When we used the Mamey Sapote fruit in our sourdough pancakes, it didn't have that flavor, so I don't know if it will turn out that way for you when you make the bread, but it sure was a sweet surprise for us and we ate the 3 little loaves very quickly!

Yummy Lunch

We had an extra yummy lunch today.  Last week we had gone out to a local farm and bought some produce.  One of those things was some spaghetti squash.  Rich made meatballs.  He used some pork tenderloin that he ground up in the food processor and added some of our home made sourdough bread crumbs and added some of our garden basil.  While he fried the meat balls we made some sauce from our garden tomatoes.  We added garlic, onion and basil to that.  We also cooked our spaghetti squash by poking holes in the hard shell, heating it in the microwave for 10 minutes on high, cutting it open and scooping out the stringy flesh and then Rich cooked it the rest of the way in the skillet.  It was so great to have all the fresh ingredients in our lunch today!

 

 

Mary loved it all but as usual she wanted it all separate except the parmesan cheese on the spaghetti squash.

 

The next treat was some lovely Mexican/Central American fruit called Mamey Sapote.  We received this as a gift from our dear brother in the Lord, Todd, down in Bakersfield.  We cut it open and took a taste.  It was delicious.  We scooped out the fruit and covered it and put it in the fridge.  Todd said it even tastes better the next day.  So we plan on using some of it in our sourdough pancakes tomorrow instead of banana.  It has such a sweet and unique flavor, very tropical and very yummy!

 

 

Mary is holding the seeds of the Mamey.  We plan on planting them.  You are supposed to plant them right away in a well drained soil.  In their natural tropical habitat they grow very large but maybe we can make a house plant out of it, like our avocado trees.  We will see.

Growin' Up

Tonight I was just struck so profoundly how big Mary is getting. She was working on a piece called the Dance of the Irish. She loves a challenge and works very hard on pieces. Sometimes I wish I could stop time and rest in the moment, but time marches on!

 

Here is the link to the video: http://youtu.be/fiTzmzfTopU

Apple Butter

I made apple butter yesterday and it made the house smell so yummy with cinnamon, sugar, cloves, all spice and nutmeg.  This is the recipe I used and it was super easy and tastes great!

CROCK POT APPLE BUTTER

Approximately 3 lb. apples
3 cups sugar...
2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 tsp. allspice
1/2 tsp. cloves
Dash of salt
3/4 cup water or fresh apple cider

Fill Crock-pot 3/4 full with peeled, cored and sliced apples. Add the remaining ingredients and stir until evenly mixed. Cover and cook on low setting overnight or until the butter is of a thick, spreadable consistency.
If apple butter has too much liquid, remove lid and cook on high until thickened. Stir often as butter thickens to prevent scorching.
Store in refrigerator for up to 6 weeks. Freeze for longer storage.
Variation: For a less sweet apple butter, substitute 1 cup honey for the sugar.
To can the apple butter, pack into hot jars leaving 1/4-inch headspace and process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

Roses and Orchids

This is my sweet little baby rose. Rich bought this little rose bush for me when we were courting back in 2001. It was the first plant he bought me and it has survived all these years. A couple of moves in Cali and then all the way up here. I thought I lost it last year when we had the subzero temps in December. In the spring it had one tiny green shoot come up but now it is all full and beautiful. I told Rich it is such a symbol of our love, everlasting!

Now on to my orchid. I bought this on a whim about 4 years ago. I had never grown an orchid before and thought I would give it a try. I had success and it would bloom once a year. Well this year it started blooming in January and had 10 blooms about the time those started fading it sent out a another set of 5 on the same bloom stalk and then when those faded it sent out another bud on the same stalk with 10. So it has bloomed continually on the same stalk for 9 months and produced 25 blooms. It seems pretty unusual for me. I don't know if orchids do that often or not?

Here it is today with 9 remaining blooms.

Here it is in April when I photographed it for an article on Rich's blog.

Here is a bloom I used to make a corsage for Mary's ballet teacher for Valentines day.

Crater Lake

We went to Crater Lake today and had a lot of fun!  Mary had not seen Crater Lake that she can remember so it was very exciting for her.  The day was very windy but lovely.  The lake was breath taking and it was such a great day.  We packed sandwiches and had a pic-nic.  We shared our table with a German couple.  We had a nice conversation over lunch.  They loved traveling in the U.S. and were very interested in how we were homeschooling Mary.  They said in Germany it is against the law to homeschool.  They were very sad about that and I felt sorry for them.  We feel so blessed to be able to homeschool Mary and have the freedoms that we have.   

This was Rich's favorite outlook.  It was true eye candy to him.  We spent quite bit of time there just looking and enjoying the wind and beautiful weather up there.

Thinking and looking

Wind on the water

The last shot before going home. The water got deeper blue as the sky cleared.

Happy Birthday Rich

We just celebrated Rich's last year of his 50's.  I have posted a few pics of him down through the years.  He is my only true and handsome sweetheart.  I am so very thankful for the years that we have known each other and the wonderful 11 years of marriage.  He is wonderful husband, father and my best friend! 

 Fishing while on leave from the Army 1980

 

 

 With Army buddies in Georgia 1980

 

 

 Playing a Reno Elvis in a church play

 

 

 With a special gift on his birthday in 2007

 

 

 Crater Lake 2007

 

 

 Fishing at a high mountain lake in Utah 2001

 

 

A little shaver in 1956

 

 

 The chocoholic cake Mary and I made him circled by luscious Oregon grapes

 

 

 A book he got.  He wants to take some trips into the wild areas around here and learn to find some plants and use them in recipes.  This is good book with lots of detail and info.

 

 

 Happy at a local steak house!

 

 

Cake at his folks house afterwards. The chocaholic cake is an old recipe that I had.  It is a devils food cake mix with chocolate pudding mix, sour cream, milk, 4 eggs, 2 cups chocolate chips and chia seeds all mixed together and baked.  Then a chocolate glaze frosting poured over the top.  We had a wonderful day and are so very thankful for all the Lord has given us!