apples

After missing peach-picking season, and neglecting to pick cherries now two years in a row, we knew we had to make good on our promise to take the kids for apples before the season ended- which we did, early in October.

We meandered around Cherry Hill Orchards for about an hour, grabbed lunch at George's, then went home where we spent the afternoon transforming our pickings into this

applesauce

and this

apple butter

with plenty of fresh apple snacking while we worked.  Evyn alone ate four apples, in just the first afternoon!

Father's Day treats

The kids were excited to show their Daddy his Father's Day gifts - handmade cards, and homemade donuts!

Seems I've finally found something I am capable of baking successfully.   I know, donuts are supposed to be fried, right?  So these are basically little round cakes.  But I found a donut pan, and cobbled together a recipe from ones I found online, and the result was a tray full of little glazed treats that tasted a LOT like the real thing.  Yum!

test kitchen

We've been busy in the kitchen, testing new recipes. First, we tried our hands at making homemade mozzarella. The cheese was coming along nicely, until the final stage where we had to re-heat the curds to stretch shape them. A little too much heat and... well, let's just say we have about two pounds of "ricotta" in the refrigerator. It was a lot of fun, though, and something we'll definitely be trying again!

The cheese experiment yesterday yielded over a gallon of whey, so this morning we used a bit of it to make a couple loaves of crusty Italian bread.









The bread was a moderate success- definitely edible! (Andrew ate quite a bit of the raw dough... why, I'm not sure, because it didn't taste very good un-baked!) Another recipe we're looking forward to trying again and improving on.







Tonight we're peeling and cutting a whole (7#) beef tenderloin into steaks, tips and stew cubes (most of which we'll freeze and enjoy over the next month or two), starting a gallon of kefir, and making a batch of chicken wings to enjoy while we watch the Superbowl. A near-perfect winter weekend (if only our kitchen was self-cleaning)!