Zucchini Ghost....

About a month ago, when my garden was starting to die down, I pulled a large overgrown zucchini from it and set it aside. I didn't throw it away, didn't cut it open & cook it, just let it sit. I had a plan for that zucchini....

Years ago I remember seeing an article in a magazine about zucchini ghosts at Halloween. Basically you carve an over-sized zucchini like you would a pumpkin. Well yesterday came & went and I managed to forget all about my zucchini ghost, despite the fact that the zucchini had been sitting on our counter for weeks. (Maybe that's why? I got used to it sitting there and treated it like part of the furniture...)

So this morning as I was cleaning the kitchen, I saw that zucchini sitting there and recalled my forgotten plans. Rather than just toss the poor vegetable, I pulled out the pumpkin carving kit and got to work. (A day late, but better late than never, right?)

First I cut off the "bottom" of the zucchini--the bigger end.

Then I use a long handled spoon to start scooping out the insides, just like a pumpkin.

This is my arm up to almost the elbow in the zucchini....I wonder if this is what it's like to help birth a cow? Ick.....

Here's what it should like like when you get it all cleaned out. You don't want to set fire to your zucchini ghost when you're done...

I started carving the eyes into the zucchini with the cutting tool from the pumpkin carving kit.

The eyes after they've been carved.

Here's the finished zucchini ghost! Light your tealight candle and place the zucchini over it....

And there's your zucchini ghost! I'm imagining a whole porch full of these. :)

The Saga of The Working Single Dog Mom & The Traveling Oscar Meyer Salesman

Back in 1994 we were a one dog family. Our dog Rowdy was six years old and acting kind of lonely. He enjoyed being around us but you could tell he was "missing something" in his life. I had loved Dachshunds for a very long time and had at that time been looking into where I could get one maybe from a rescue or someplace that didn't cost one month's mortgage payment. I did frequent searches online for our local newspaper. One day in December, just a few days before Christmas, an ad caught my eye that said started off like this:
"Mom is a single working Border Collie & dad is a traveling salesman for Oscar Mayer." That intrigued me... I called the number in the ad and found out that the puppies were half Border Collie and half Dachshund. Here is the story she told me:

The husband and wife both bred dogs--one of them bred Border Collies and one of them bred Dachshunds (I can't remember which was which). Their Border Collie stud got loose and he was hit by a car and killed. Shortly after that their female Border Collie breeder went into heat. (And yes, she was a working Border Collie--hence the "working single mom".) They owned a Dachshund stud who was actually "retired" because he was 13 years old. He was enjoying his retired life around the house and apparently when the female Border Collie went into heat he got a little interested. I'm sure they thought they didn't have to watch him too carefully because he was a senior dog and they thought he was "past his breeding prime". They were wrong. They discovered this when they realized their female Border Collie was pregnant.
Skip ahead a little while but not too far ahead--the puppies hadn't been born yet. The aforementioned senior Dachshund was having trouble with his teeth so they took him into the vet to get them worked on. As with most canine major dental work, they had to sedate him. They brought him home and noticed he wasn't acting himself. A couple of days later he died, the victim of a bad reaction to the anesthetic. Shortly after that the female Border Collie gave birth to her litter, the poor senior father never getting to see his offspring.

Wow, talk about a tragic story! I warned you in my previous post that it was full of love, passion & death. But when I went to go look at the puppies I immediately fell in love with Zoe. Although all of the puppies had mostly Dachshund characteristics, she was the only one that was what I picture as the "typical Dachshund coloring", which is black with tan markings. The rest of her litter mates were either all black or the reddish brown color with black "eyebrows". So right from the get-go she was special. And although I was very sad about the circumstances surrounding her birth, I was so glad it happened to bring Zoe into my life.

My Zoe

I just received a comment from a person who had found my blog through one of my favorite blogs, The Pioneer Woman. I had left a comment there about my dog Zoe, who is half Border Collie & half Dachshund. (I like to think of her as a "Border Weenie".) The story of how I ended up with her is a touching tale about misguided love and death, so I will save it for another day when I have more time on my hands. But for now I wanted to post some pictures of her so anyone who wants to know can see what she looks like. So here she is:

This picture was when she was younger...look into those eyes, I dare you.

Zoe has a weird habit of playing with rocks. I try not to let her do it often because I don't want her to chip a tooth or something. If I can get video of her doing it, I'll have to post it someday. She gets the rock between her front paws and looks like she's going to hike it like a football. Then she scoots it all over the yard, while making these weird "monkey noises" (it's the only way we can think of describing them). It's pretty darn funny, actually.

She's known for lying down in weird places. Like your computer chair when you're trying to work on your computer. Or on top of the couch, like a cat. (She LOVES being perched up there so she can look out our front window at everything going on outside.)

This is a favorite picture of mine, even though it's not a very good one (thank the camera on my cell phone). If you look VERY carefully, you can see her tongue sticking out. If you know her, you know this is something that happens about a billion times a day. (Yes, she's a licker.) But when captured in this particular picture, it looks like she's sticking her tongue out AT my husband. I like to think that's what she was really doing....
I promise I'll soon tell you the gut-wrenching story of The Working Single Dog Mom & The Traveling Oscar Meyer Salesman....

I Hate Traffic...

At my old job, I had a wonderful fifteen to twenty minute drive to and from the office every day. I left my house, drove down the street, turned and drove the rest of the way down that one road. It was a road that went past lots of pastures, farms, corn, cows, horses, sheep, goats....you get the picture. Every day I saw the same houses, same herds of cattle, same little ponies growing up into horses. It was awesome and I did it for nine years.

But now I have a new job. I've been there for a little over seven months and the drive is killing me. On a good day it takes about half an hour. On a bad day....well, I think it once took me an hour and a half to get to work. I'm driving the southern Idaho version of the L.A. freeways. Okay, I admit it's only one freeway and a connector. But still, we have traffic jams, accidents, motorcycle cops and all the same things that make big city freeways suck. Now add to this the fact that our freeway has had construction going on for I don't know how many months now. Not a good combination.

I am normally a pretty passive driver, if I am in a nice passive environment like my sweet little road into my old work. (Worst I had to deal with was a farmer on a slow tractor or someone slid off the road in the snow.) But put me in this bumper to bumper defensive driving nightmare and I don't do so well. Today was just one example of the daily incidents I have to endure...

I had just gotten off the connector onto the regular freeway and got into the fast lane to get past the slow merging folks. I was going along at a good clip. Not speeding, mind you, just a healthy 70 in a 65--nothing to sniff at. I was at least going faster than the lane next to me, which is the whole idea of the fast lane. Soon I saw a fast approaching car zoom up behind me and start riding my bumper. Since I was already going faster than the lane next to me and was not only doing the speed limit, but going over it, I decided to stay put. Immediately the woman driving starting flailing her arms around, smacking her palm on the steering wheel and throwing her hands up in the universal gesture for "what the heck?" Although my lip reading isn't it's best, I'm pretty sure "heck" doesn't start with an F.

This continued on for a little bit, with her continuing to ride my bumper, all the while flailing about like she was about to take off into flight. At her first opportunity she darted out from behind me into the lane to our right and started maneuvering around like an Indy 500 driver jockeying for position. I continued on in my lane while watching her jump from lane to lane, gaining a few precious car lengths ahead of me but never making it back to the fast lane. This was about the time the lane she was in slowed down considerably because of the construction-induced merging further up the freeway. Since I drive this route at least five days out of every week, I knew this would be happening, hence the reason I stayed in my fast lane.

Now as I said before, I am a pretty passive driver. I try not to give in to road rage or the silly games that people play on the road to piss other drivers off. So I handled the situation with grace and class......okay.....maybe not. But I did feel a deep satisfaction down in my gut as I grinned from ear to ear and gave her a happy wave as I sailed right past her crawling car in the other lane.

Storing Up For Winter....

I think that all of us have come to realize that times are not what they used to be. Jobs are more scarce, the economy is crap and prices on things like fresh produce will probably go up this winter when they're not readily in season. This is one of the reasons we decided to plant our garden. Unfortunately it hasn't gone as well as we had hoped, with our corn getting corn smut (I swear it's real, I didn't make it up!), our tomatoes getting blossom end rot and a recent infestation of squash bugs. So although I'm working on saving the tomatoes, zucchini and pumpkin and they may be salvageable, the corn is dead. (That scene in Oklahoma keeps rolling over in my mind...."Poor Jud is deeeeeeaaaaaaad..." Only I hear it as "Our corn is dead." I'm weird that way.)

That's all the more reason why I wanted to start freezing as much of the fresh vegetables as possible. I tried to think of how I would use them and froze them accordingly. For instance, the zucchini I would primarily use in zucchini bread (I'd love at Christmas-time to be able to give beautifully wrapped loaves of yummy zucchini bread to friends). And carrots would either be shredded and used in said zucchini bread or sliced up & put into stews or simmered all day in a crock pot with a roast. Mmmmmmmmmm.....

So that's why I spent several hours yesterday harvesting (sounds so much better than "picking"), washing, peeling, slicing, blanching and freezing carrots. You should see my orange-tinted finger nails... But the end result was worth it. Fourteen cups of sliced carrots and two cups of small whole baby carrots tucked away into our freezer, waiting to be pulled out and cooked on a cold winter day or any other time between now and next summer. Then after the carrots, just for good measure I did the same thing (minus the peeling & slicing of course) to the green beans I had picked from the garden. It was a small amount of green beans, just enough for a side dish with one meal--my husband commented, "That's not going to get us very far." But this was just one harvesting. Green beans grow constantly and as you pick the mature ones, they continually reproduce. So each time I harvest a new batch I'll prepare it & pop it in the freezer.

Here's a little tip, thanks to my mom. (Hi Mom!) A couple of weeks ago I had spent the good part of an afternoon shredding zucchini and carrots for that zucchini bread I was talking about. I knew I was going to be using it zucchini bread and would need to measure out one cup of each for the mix. Not knowing if zucchini & carrots could be frozen together, I called my mom and asked her. She suggested freezing the shredded vegetables in muffin tins (did you know they measure exactly 1/2 cup each?) and then popping those into freezer bags. What an awesome idea! And it worked great! (Thanks Mom!)

I can't help but feel a little smug over knowing I've got things stored away in my freezer so that any time I need a side dish or an addition to a stew I can just pull it out and use it. I keep thinking of all the trips to the grocery store when I can skip past the produce section, knowing I have my own private little produce section waiting at home in my freezer. Things haven't gotten bad enough (yet) in our world that this is an absolute necessity. I can only imagine back in the pioneer days when food harvested during the summer and fall had to sustain a whole family throughout winter. I can imagine long hours out in the fields (no tiny gardens for the pioneers!) in fall, looking for those last remnants of the veggies that are going to nourish your family when you're snowed in and can't get to town. (Sorry, I appear to be channeling my inner Laura Ingalls....) But there is definite satisfaction in knowing we will save money during these tough times by storing up our own food. And just wait until we get our pork and beef in the freezer...I'll be over the moon. :)

Pickles!!

A couple of weekends ago I picked cucumbers and ended up with about 3/4 of a 5 gallon bucket. Only one thing can be done when you end up with that much....start pickling! I claimed a whole day to be "The Great Pickle Day" and planned to spend all day working on it. My mother had sent me a bread & butter pickle recipe and I couldn't wait to use it. Here's a basic run down of how it went...

First of course, I washed all of the cucumbers & set them out on a rack to dry. The recipe calls for about 6 pounds of cucumbers.

When the cucumbers were dry, I sliced them up. (The recipe was called "cross-cut pickle slices" so I went with that. And I've only ever eaten bread & butter pickles in slices so I wanted to go with something I knew.) But you could slice them however you wanted, or I'm sure if they were very tiny you could pickle them whole.

Next I sliced up enough onions to make 1 1/2 cups and peeled 2 large garlic cloves. Those went into the pot with the sliced cucumbers.

Then I added 1/3 cup of pickling salt & mixed it all together to coat all of the cucumbers. The recipe then calls for covering this mixture with approximately 2 trays of cubed or crushed ice and letting it sit for 3 hours. When the 3 hours was over, I removed the remaining ice, drained the pot and took out the 2 garlic cloves.

Before I started with the next step of preparing the pickles, I wanted to start heating my pint jars. This can be done in a water bath, but since I already had a lot of stuff happening on top of my stove, I went with a recommendation I got from our local extension office. I put the jars on a cookie sheet and heated them in a 180 degree oven. I had already sanitized the jars & lids in the dishwasher so this was an acceptable way to get the jars heated without getting them wet again and taking up more space on top of my stove. DON'T leave out this step though, however you decide to do it!! If the jars are not heated before you put the hot pickle mixture in, they can crack or shatter.

So then I got back to my cucumbers...it was time to add the flavor! I combined 4 1/2 cups of sugar, 1 1/2 teaspoons of Turmeric, 1 1/2 teaspoons of celery seed, 2 tablespoons of mustard seed and 3 cups of white vinegar. This was heated just to boiling and then I added the cucumber slices & onion to the pot and heated for about 5 minutes.

This hot pickle mixture was then ladled into the hot pint jars, one at at time, keeping the other jars in the oven until I was ready to use the next one to ensure they were kept hot. I loosely packed the hot pickles into the jars, leaving 1/2 inch of room on top. (Again, a very important step. Headspace must be left at the top of each jar--and each type of recipe has it's own measurement--to make sure it will seal properly in the end.) After wiping the tops to remove any liquid and removing air bubbles (oops, another important step--remove the air bubbles!! DO IT!!), put a lid and ring on each jar and seal tightly.

Next, each jar was set into the hot water bath for 5 minutes. (The time is not started until the water starts boiling again after all jars are in the water.) Here's another important part--the jars must have 1 - 2 inches of water above them for them to process properly and get a good seal.

When the jars are done processing, wipe them down to remove any residue and remove the jars to a cooling rack.

This was where my paranoia set in...I tightened any loose rings and stood there staring at my jars, wondering if they were processed right. What if I didn't do it right and anyone who eats them gets terribly sick? How do I know if they processed properly?
I was in the middle of processing my 7th jar of pickles (my canning pot only holds 6) when I heard it. A soft little metallic-like "pop" from the direction of my pickle jars. I quickly turned my head, like I thought I would catch something actually happening. No, nothing going on over there. I went back to processing that last jar when I heard it again..."pop"....This time I decided to investigate a little further and went to check out my jars. What if they were cracking or something? That's when I noticed two of the lids were just slightly different in appearance than the others. (Yes, "One of these things is not like the other" from Sesame Street actually sang it's way through my head for a moment.)
I went to my computer, logging in to the wealth of information on the internet, searching for a hint of what was going on. Aha! Remember that "headspace" I mentioned earlier? This was the reason for it! When the pickles start to cool, it forms a vacuum seal which causes the lid to pull down & flatten, hence the "pop" I was hearing. I was so excited to know I had done it right and wasn't going to kill my family with botulism.

After your jars have cooled for about 24 hours, you can test the seal. (The canning book I have doesn't recommend testing a seal until at least 24 hours after just to be safe but I've heard other say they test them sooner.)
"The best method for testing a seal is to press the center of the lid to determine if it is concave; then remove the band and gently try to life the lid off with your fingertips. If the center does not flex up and down and you cannot lift the lid off, the lid has a good vacuum seal."

That was over a week ago and this weekend I opened one of the jars and tried some bread and butter pickles. Wow, they're really good! My son tried them and agreed, which really means something since teenagers are some of the pickiest eaters on the planet...

They're Always Our Babies...

Our kids--even when they're grown & too big to hold and don't hardly fit on the couch or the bed--are always our babies.....especially when they're sleeping. No matter what they do when they're awake, or how crazy they drive us, it seems that when they're lying there sleeping (just like when they're babies) they look so innocent & sweet. You want to sit down & cuddle them (even know you KNOW that would never be allowed if they were awake.) I wonder if I'll still be feeling this way when HE'S 41 and I'm 65......Does that ever go away?