Mountain Harvest Basket: sharing

Showing posts with label sharing. Show all posts

Friday, April 10, 2009

A Sweet Treat

My Favorite Rum Raisin Ice Cream

Last night I overdosed on my favorite rich rum raisin ice cream. I don't eat it very often, as I don't usually buy it for myself. This little pint of RR was a surprise gift to me from Bob. He knows that I enjoy it especially when I am in need of cheering up. He also knows that bringing me a pint of this special ice cream can effectively get him out of the "dog house" should he find himself in one at any time. It works pretty well.

So moments after he handed me the carton of RR, and while his attention was elsewhere for the moment, I opened it up and dug into its rich creamy goodness. I did share a spoonful or two with him while he was here, but I saved most of it for later after my dinner. Then I totally OD'ed on it before I fell asleep on the couch in a blissful rummy milky slumber.

Mmmmm....creamy rich goodness... and chewy rummy raisins

Thank you Bob! You are very sweet.

Monday, March 9, 2009

Belated Birthday Posts

Candle Forest

Walnut Butterflies

I have been so busy and stressed out for the past several weeks that I have had little time to create blog posts. I did make time to post about my 1/2 birthday celebration and my other milestones, but I neglected to post about Jack's birthday at the end of January and also about Bob's birthday at the end of February. Sorry Guys. You know how busy I have been dealing long distance with my Dad's issues. I know you understand.

Anyway, in this post I will catch up by showing you some photos from both men's birthday celebrations. We all had a fun time, ate too much cake and ice cream and laughed a lot.

In the photos above leading off this post, you can see some close ups of Jack's birthday carrot cake with lemon vanilla cream cheese frosting.

Below is the same cake in all its flaming glory!

Beeswax candles aglow for Jack's birthday

Blow hard Jack! Get them all out. Good job!

Some of Jack's birthday presents waiting for the party to begin

This was a good moist carrot cake...Mmmm....

Along with the cake we had Jack's favorite Natural Vanilla ice cream from Breyer's. No ice cream photos though.

One last shot of the flaming cake before it disappears...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now Bob's birthday is really Leap Day, but we celebrated it on February 28th this year. Bob requested either a carrot cake or a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting for his birthday cake this year. I decided to experiment and give him a little of both.

He got a chocolate cream cheese frosted carrot cake!

Bob's Chocolate Carrot Birthday Cake

Jack supplied Bob's requested ice cream: Rocky Road. Again, no ice cream photos.

Of course there were birthday gifts to go along with the cake:

Gifts and Cake ~ natural beeswax candles, of course

And some balloons too:

Birthday Balloons

Bob successfully blows out all of the candles

Chocolate Covered Carrot Birthday Cake...moist and delicious

I think I prefer the lemon vanilla cream cheese frosting on my carrot cake, but the chocolate cream cheese frosting was very good too. I think the white frosting looks better on the carrot cake, provides more contrast in colors. Both cakes were devoured very quickly.

Happy Birthday Jack and Bob!

© Copyright 2009 Mountain Harvest Basket

Friday, February 20, 2009

Two, or Maybe Three, Celebrations!

Colorful Balloons decorated the House

Gifts Piled on the Coffee Table

No, not a birthday exactly, but a 1/2 birthday. My 48 1/2 birthday! (That would be 48.5 for you decimal nerdy friends of mine out there.) Yes, we crazy folks out here in the California foothills celebrate every chance we get, and that means celebrating 1/2 birthdays. So yesterday, February 19th, was my half birthday.

We had my half party at Jack's home, adorned as you can see above, with balloons that both men inflated with their manly hot air. No helium this time, but then helium doesn't last as long as air anyway. These beautiful ballooons went home with me and are presently filling my office with colorful cheer.

The guys gave me some nice gifts. Half birthdays are not supposed to be as elaborate in the gift area as full birthdays, but this year I received some very nice and very useful gifts from both guys.

Before we get to the gifts however, you need to see my favorite photo of the night below:

Cake, candles, gifts and curious kitty!

This is my view of the 1/2 chocolate cake (baked by Bob) just before I made my wish and blew out the candles. Notice Jack's cat, Lestat (named for his sharp teeth), in the background being very curious about all of the interesting things that appeared on "his" coffee table. I just love this photo!

So here are a few of the gifts I received for this year's half birthday:

Loaf Pans from Jack

I received 3 wonderful commercial grade loaf pans from Jack. These pans are heavy duty commercial grade metal pans that I will use in my bread baking hobby. I am excited to have them and can't wait to make some time to use them. Notice that I received 3 loaf pans. Just enough for our family of 3. One loaf of bread for each of us!

Cute Mini Cast Iron Skillet

Bob gifted me with this tiny cast iron skillet. I wanted it for a spoon rest or to use for melting butter. It's adorable, and is presently resting in the middle of my stovetop! I placed the wine glass beside it so you could tell how small it is.

A Pair of Excellent Candle/Fire Lighters

I received a pair of my favorite candle lighters. These babies are hard to find in the stores. They are wonderful because they fold up at an angle so that you can stick them inside a deep candle holder without burning yourself. They are great! I will use them all the time. Good for lighting the fire or the BBQ too. Thanks Bob.

I also received a great cast iron griddle/grill that fits my stove or BBQ really well, and a cast iron food press/weight for meats or sandwiches, but I didn't get photos of them. Bob got those for me, and I am so grateful because I had researched them for about 3 months before deciding which ones I wanted. He got me exactly the ones I liked. I will use them to cook magnificent things for us to eat!

Of course my favorite gifts of all are shown in the next two photos:

Jack

Bob

For this 1/2 birthday party, Bob made me a 1/2 chocolate cake with chocolate cream cheese frosting that you saw in the photo above, but here's a close up shot:

Chocolate 1/2 birthday cake~ or what's left of it

Jack made us his famous Picante Chicken with Rice dinner. It was so delicious that we didn't even take the time to get any photos of it. I provided a simple tossed green salad to round out the meal. We had some nice red wine, good food and good company. A very cozy family celebration. Just what I needed since I've been so stressed lately. Thanks Guys!

Now the title of this blog post says that there was more than one celebration to talk about. My half birthday is the first one.

The second celebration is that today marks my one year anniversary of this Mountain Harvest Basket blog! I started this blog one year ago on February 20, 2008. Hard to believe that time has flown by so fast, but it has. So just imagine in your heads the Happy Birthday Song...

Happy Blogiversary to Me!

Happy Blogiversary and Thank You to my Loyal Readers!!

Happy Blogiversary to Me!

I am so glad that I started this blog because I really enjoy writing about all of the crazy stuff that happens around here, and I have made such good friends through my blogging circle. Blogging has really helped to keep me happy and sane this past year. Thank you all. I love every one of you.

I will try to think of a fun way to celebrate this one year anniversary of MHB in the next few days. Perhaps I'll come up with some sort of fun give away or contest or something. We'll see how creative I can be.

OK, so that was celebration number 2. There's still one more to go.

The third milestone to celebrate is that this blog post is my number 101! Yes, I am one post late. I should have noticed that my last post was number 100, but I have been very busy lately, so I am choosing to acknowledge and celebrate blog post number 101 instead. Yay! Over 100 postings so far! Wow!

There you have it. Three celebrations in one post. Whew! I am tired now. I just can't party like I used to, I guess.

Love to you all. Thanks for being here and sharing my Mountain Harvest Basket with me.

Friday, November 21, 2008

Harvest Dinner 2008

Harvest Dinner 2008

For the past decade or so, at least since my Mom passed away, Jack and I usually travel to the LA area to attend Thanksgiving dinner at the home of one his relatives, usually one of his sisters. This means that for several years I did not have the pleasure of preparing and hosting a big Thanksgiving dinner celebration in my own home with my family and friends. It also meant that I did not get to make the traditional foods for Thanksgiving the way my own family did or the foods that I had learned to make as a young woman when I was married (both long ago).

So a few years ago I started the tradition of having what I call our annual Harvest Dinner celebration in the comfort and relaxation of my own home, with my friends and family, with my traditional foods, served on my favorite plates, with my festive tablecloth, using my serving dishes, my decorations etc etc. In other words, Harvest Dinner is Thanksgiving my way.

Here is our Harvest Dinner invitation that we gave to our family and friends:

The 3 of us invite you to share in our annual Harvest Dinner. It’s our way of celebrating our abundance and to give thanks to the earth, our loved ones and our universe (spirit). Sort of like traditional Thanksgiving, but not on Thanksgiving Day.

I like to include a moment or two before we begin eating the feast of food to express our thankfulness for all of the abundance that we have. Some would call this moment of thanks a prayer or the traditonal grace that is said to give thanks for our meal, but I mean it to be much more than mere gratitude for the food. This moment of acknowledgement for our great abundance, is meant to bring into our consciousness how fortunate we are to have not only an abundance of food on our table, but also our great abundance in many other areas of lives. We have homes, health, safety, freedom, friends, family, and most of all we have love. So as we raised our wine glasses to toast a Happy Harvest, we thanked each other for being being here, Mother Earth for our abundant harvest, and Spirit for guiding us each day. Then we dug into the mounds of food on our plates.

Some years I have printed out this grace that I found in one of my Mom's books long ago, and we have made it a part of our Harvest Dinner thankfulness moment. I do not know who the author is:

This is a time for giving thanks
This is a time for remembrance

Let us remember our past and
Give thanks for what we have become

Let us be present in the present and
Give thanks for the here and now

Let us remember our future and
Give thanks for all that is to happen to us

Let us give thanks for the whole universe
Especially for our creation
And the life that is in us

Let us give thanks for that consummation of all things
Which Spirit is working out in us

May light and love surround us
And guide us to right action

I think it is a lovely, although lengthy sentiment.

Anyway, I wanted to share our most recent Harvest Dinner with you. We usually have it on a Sunday afternoon about two weeks before Thanksgiving. We had our 2008 dinner last Sunday, November 16th.

Here's the menu:

2008 Harvest Dinner Menu

Appetizers
Baby Carrots & Celery
Mixed Nuts
Olives
Goat Cheese & Crackers

Main Course
Free Range Turkey
Greek Stuffing
Bread Stuffing Casserole
Cornbread Pudding
Mashed Potatoes
Turkey Gravy
Pineapple-Orange Sweet Potatoes
Fresh Whole Berry Cranberry Sauce
Jellied Cranberry Sauce

Desserts
Apple Pie & Sugarless Apple Pie– both by Bob
Pecan Pie – by Jen
Pumpkin Pie – by Jack
Whipped Cream

I got lots of photos of the food, but absolutely none of us or our guests! We invited Bob's parents and a close friend of the family to make us 6 for dinner. Just the right amount of people to fit around my dining table.

So what follows here are the photos of our food feast with no pictures of any people or pets! Oh well, I guess I was totally focused on getting the food prepared and on the table for everyone.

Harvest Dinner Dining Table

That tablecloth was made by me 15 years ago for a Thanksgiving dinner I hosted in my little condo in Southern California, long before I moved to the mountains and my rural life. I still love the tablecloth and its rich colors.

Buffet Table set up in my kitchen

We served the food buffet style on a portable table set up in my kitchen. Everyone filled their own plate with whatever they desired from the buffet setup. I find this is the easiest way to serve the food because all of that food would never fit on my dining room table. This also eliminates the need for everyone passing heavy hot serving dishes around the table. It limits spillage and other dining "disasters".

The roasted turkey before being carved

I try to buy naturally raised hormone and antibiotic free turkeys when I cook turkey. I find that I like the way they taste better, and I feel better about buying a turkey that was raised without chemicals. This one was a Diestel Farms brand turkey. That's the brand I usually buy.

On our buffet table there was:

Roasted Turkey ~ light and dark meat

Pineapple Orange Fresh Sweet Potatoes

Bob's Famous Creamy Garlic Mashed Potatoes

Turkey Gravy ~ photo taken while gravy was cooking

My Mom's Greek Chestnut Stuffing

Cornbread Pudding ~ made this year by Jack

Bread Stuffing ~ Mrs. Cubbison's with my "doctoring up"

Fresh Whole Berry Cranberry Sauce

Bob's parents brought some flaky dinner biscuits that were wonderful, but I failed to get a picture of them. Trust me, they were good.

And then after dinner we had pie! Errr...make that pies. Plural.

Jack's creamy Pumpkin Pie

Jack tried a new filling recipe this year that used real cream instead of evaporated milk. It was a richer pumpkin than I have had before.

Bob's Sugarless Apple on the left, and regular Apple on the right

Both apple pies were great. I couldn't even tell the difference between the sugarless and the one with sugar in it.

My Pecan Pie ~ tasted great even if the crust is ugly

Well, that's it for this year. The turkey and all the leftovers are long gone by the time I am writing this post. Maybe next year I'll get a photo or two of the people as well as the food!

Happy Harvest everyone! And Happy Thanksgiving!

Friday, October 31, 2008

Halloween Pumpkin Celebration

Bob's Pumpkin from Halloween 2007 ~ Jen added the greeting

Tonight is Halloween night so last night the 3 of us got together in my kitchen and carved our Halloween jack o' lanterns. We started this tradition several years ago and I really enjoy the evening.

We each picked out our own pumpkin. Each one had its own personality that spoke to the new owner. This nice whimsical round one is mine:

Isn't he beautiful? So round and orange.

We set up our work space in my small cluttered kitchen. The guys shared a work table, while I used my kitchen counter.

Jack and Bob carving their pumpkins and having fun. (the front of Jack's sweatshirt says, "When did my wild oats turn into shredded wheat?" Ha!)

Here's my cleaned out beauty:

And here's just some of the gooey insides that came out of our pumpkins.

Stringy stuff & seeds ~ I will roast the seeds later, maybe tonight!

I will save a few of these field pumpkin seeds to plant next summer. These field pumpkins make great Halloween and fall decorations, but not so good pies. For pie making, I grow special small and tender Pie Pumpkins

The rest of the pumpkins seeds I will salt and roast in the oven. Probably later tonight or tomorrow. Jack really likes them. I find them a bit tedious to get out of their shells.

Now comes the artistic portion of our program:

Jack carefully drawing his pumpkin face features

Bob concentrating hard on his careful carving ~ notice his open mouth with his tongue poking out like a cute little kid hard at work

I don't usually draw or plan my pumpkin faces. I just carefully clean out the insides and then stare at the front of my pumpkin for several minutes until some creative idea comes to me. Then I just pick up a sharp knife and start carving. Usually I do the nose first, then the mouth and last the eyes.

We have found over the years that we each have our own unique pumpkin carving styles. The faces vary from year to year, but our unique styles remain consistent.

Here is our finished trio of carved jack o' lanterns: