Monthly Archives: July 2018

The Corn Critter

By

The other day, while sitting on the back porch enjoying the first cooler temperatures of the season in a month, my husband says, “There’s something moving a corn-stalk in the garden.” We watched the jiggling corn-stalk for a moment then he grabbed the binoculars and I grabbed my camera. We went out into the yard got a good angle on the garden and this is what we saw. Thank goodness for a zoom lens.Isn’t it adorable?
Every year we see signs of raccoons in our corn, but this cutie critter is the first time we actually seen a one in our corn. We got a good chuckle at seeing it. I’m glad I got a few photos of it too. It’s my first raccoon photos ever.

Since the corn wasn’t as tasty this year, we decided to leave the bulk of it in the garden for the critters. Later on, after the stalks turn brown and dry out, we’ll pick any corn ears left. We’ll shell the corn and scatter it on the ground for the critters that forage and eats the hard corn kernels.

Wishing you all a week full of smiles.

.

cucumbers – acorn squash

By

We finally got a mess of cucumbers, all-be-it they are rather dinky ones, but they are cucumbers none-the-less. Until recently, the deer kept the vines eaten back. We’ve kept an eye on the vines and as soon as these little ones plumped out, we picked them. Fresh cucumbers are a tasty side dish, in salads, a snack or even a sandwich.

The evil demon squash vine borers murdered my acorn squash vines and forced me to harvest them.
According to the information I’ve read, these acorn squash are ripe. I’m amazed since they should have had another month to go. However, I’m letting them set on the coounter awhile before I attempt to cook one. These are winter squash, so letting them set shouldn’t harm them.

 

I hope you all have a great week.

 

 

 

.

 

Redwork Update, 1st corn harvest, surprise squash

By

I finally chose a fabric for the borders of my redwork block. I ordered it and it should be here in a couple weeks. The fabric company I ordered from has good prices, but they are slower with shipping than I’m used too. I hope the fabric is the right weight to work well with my blocks. The weight of fabric is one of the hardest parts about shopping online. Oh well, I’ll know soon enough.
As close as I can figure, I’ve got 2 more redwork blocks to go. I’m enjoying making them, but I’ll be glad when they’re all finished and ready to be made into a quilt top. Here’s an edited photo of the blocks I’ve finished so far since I returned to doing my redwork project.

My husband harvested 4 ears of peaches and cream corn for our supper Sunday evening. It was really good, but it wasn’t as sweet and tasty as in previous years. We wonder if might have something to do with the dry Summer we’ve had.

While harvesting squash the other day, my husband discovered that we have a light color acorn squash growing. Since we planted only dark green Early Acorn squash seeds, the light color one on a separate vine is quite a surprise. I think it may be called a golden acorn squash. I hope it gets the chance to mature before the evil squash vine borers kills the vine. Surprise veggies put an extra bit of fun in gardening.

Wishing you all have a fun week.

.

Chicken Cordon Bleu

By

The other day, I was watching an old black and white movie and a woman in the movie said that she had made ‘Chicken Cordon Bleu’.
I’d heard of cordon bleu entrées several times over the years, but usually in reference to a restaurant menu. I don’t know why it never occurred to me that it could be made at home. I wondered just how hard it would be to make.
I went surfing around and came upon a really good recipe and decided to give it a go. I’m surprised at how easy the ‘Homemade Chicken Cordon Bleu’ recipe is to make.

This is one of the few recipes that I made real close to the published recipe.
I used:
Panko bread crumbs
Deli Black Forest Ham
Swiss Cheese slices
I didn’t use toothpicks, the chicken stayed rolled up quite nicely without them.
I checked the internal temperature of the chicken and made sure it was over 165°. I’m real careful about that.

I served the Chicken Cordon Bleu with baked squash and a baked yukon gold potato.
It was a hearty meal and very tasty. My husband sure enjoyed it too.I condsider my attempt at making Chicken Cordon Bleu a success. I’m always happy to add another tasty recipe to our menu.

Have you tried any recipes that were inspired by a mention on a movie or tv show?
Was it a success?

Wishing you a successful rest of the week.

 

 

recipe can be found at:
Taste of Home – Homemade Chicken Cordon Bleu

 

.

A Return to Redwork

By

I haven’t worked on my redwork since 2014. We had a lot going on in our lives back then and I couldn’t give it the attention it requires. So, I folded it up and put it away. Fortunately, I had the good sense to put the redwork fabric, embroidery thread and supplies all together in a bag and there they stayed in the drawer for the past 4 years. Having the supplies altogether sure made it handy for me when I decided to return to it.

I went back through my blog posts and read about my redwork. I’ve changed a couple of my plans for it. I’m not going to dye the fabric and I’ve cut the blocks apart. I plan to add a small print red fabric border on the blocks. As it turns out, planning to use a border and cutting the blocks apart was a good move for me because now I only have a few blocks to go, whereas when I had the fabric in one large piece I needed like 16 more pictures to embroider.

This morning, in an effort to try to arrange the blocks in some sort of order, I laid a sheet on the floor and began to lay out the blocks. Shelibean decided that what the blocks needed was for him to test them for comfort. He found them to be quite comfortable and napped there for about 20 minutes. I didn’t mind, he was cute sleeping peacefully and I was busy going through my coloring pictures and trying to choose some for the last few blocks.I’m glad to have my redwork as an active work-in-progress once again. My Redwork is the perfect example of my starting a project and some times needing to leave it alone until the time is right for me to finish it. It doesn’t really bother me having unfinished projects, matters-a-fact there’s a strange sense of comfort in it for me. Although, from time-to-time I need to finish my unfinished projects before starting new ones. Now that I’ve got my redwork going again, I hope I can keep up my motivation and finish it before the Summer is over, that would make me so happy.

Have a happy weekend.

*Related Redwork Posts

.