You might be a redneck

A couple of weeks ago, we went to Bass Pro in Rancho Cucuamunga. If you have never been, then I suggest going! But that's a different blog. Bass Pro has everything the outdoor enthusiast could possible dream of! Including a line of interesting home goods and furniture. These interesting pieces helped me have a Jeff Foxworthy moment, so if you don't mind please join me in my version of

You might be a redneck if . . .

You own a camouflaged chair


Now look carefully friends, this is not just a camo chair! It's a camo massage chair! That's right, after a long day of hunting you can come home, strip off your own camo pants, wash off that doe urine you put on to attract that buck, open up a Pabst Blue Ribbon and flop into this comfort of all comforts as you dream widely on which wall of your trailer you will be hanging that buck head when it comes back from the taxidermists. Weeewwwww eeeeeeeee that is one fine lookin chair! And it looks SO good next to this little beauty . . .



Yup, that there is a GENUINE whiskey barrel holding up that there table top! As if that was not a fine enough looking table, the artist went a couple of steps further and added rifles along the sides. I mean nothing says "come on and enjoy your dinner" like a Winchester rifle holding up your plate! But look closer friends, you see that thing the price tag is hanging off of? Yup you guessed it, that is a GENUINE spur! I mean it wouldn't be a thrilling adventure if you didn't have to worry about impaling yourself on that spur! Where would the fun be in that? But I love how the pros at Bass Pro knew who their target shopper would be. It may be hard to see in this picture, but those are beer cups on that fine piece of furniture.

And just in case you are shy and never let your neighbors inside, but you want them to know just how big a redneck you are, may I suggest one of these little beauties?



I mean come on that is MAGNIFICENT! Someone may never be able to come in and see that big ol' large mouth mounted on the wall, but they may assume you have one after getting an eye full of your mailbox. I mean . . . come on! Rednecks of the world unite! Join me as we stand together against conformity of the man! We have our choices! Yes!! You can choose bass, trout or catfish! No conformity here! Join me join me!!

Whew . . . sorry . .. I think I'll be okay now. Now back to your regular scheduled programing.

If all vegetables could taste this good. . .

For the last 8 years or so Larry and I have had a vegetable garden. There is something so satisfying about being able to go into your yard and pick parts of your dinner. We have been very blessed to have "green thumbs" and usually have more than we could ever eat. After you find yourself with an over abundance of produce you start to get creative with ways to prepare it. As a general rule, we only grow what we eat the most of or what can be canned so we don't waste too much. One crop we never have any problem with is zucchini. This particular plant seems to be more hardy than any other. It also seems to be the most bountiful! Pardon me while I have a Forest Gump moment here, but we like to grill it, cook it in dishes, slice it into spaghetti, stuff it, or eat it raw. But the most undisputed family favorite has to be zucchini bread.

3 Cups zucchini
2 Cups Sugar
1 Cup oil
3 large eggs
3 Cups flour
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
3 tsp vanilla
3 tsp cinnamon
1 cup walnuts (optional)

Mix wet ingredients and then add dry. Mix well bake at 325 for about an hour.

First you need zucchini, if we even go one day without harvesting, these little darlings get so big they only thing they are really good for is bread. But here is a good harvest from a few weeks ago


Using a shredder, I used my food processor (I have also done this by hand, which is NOT fun) shred your zucchini



You will need 3 cups zucchini


Add sugar, oil, eggs, mix well


Add dry ingredients, mix well



Pour into loaf pans or muffin pans. If your loaf pans are smaller this recipe will make three loaves, if they are larger, it will make two.


Bake at 325 for about an hour or until a tooth pick comes out clean


Remove from pans onto cooling rack, enjoy!


I like to eat it plain the day it's baked so the crust is still kind of crunchy. Larry likes his best with butter. You could also make a light glaze or top with cream cheese for a different flavor.

Yup, we grew those!

We LOVE apples. As a family we consume quite a bit. But I LOVE to bake with apples as much as we like to eat them fresh. One of our yearly traditions is going up to Oak Glen to pick apples. After doing this for several years, and spending a small fortune, we thought, "hey, we might be able to grow apples ourselves". So we made a trip to Lowes and asked the helpful people in the garden center if we could grow apples, here in our town and the answer, we were thrilled was YES! We just happen to get enough cold through the winter for some types of apples. Our helpful garden associate guided us to a type of tree that had been grafted. Each tree produces three or four different types of apples. Well, the blessed tree's had been in the ground just over a year when we started getting apple blossoms. A very pretty flower that despite the youth of our trees would never be more than a flower this year. Again I was surprised! We got quite the harvest for our first year. And like all other fruit trees, the fruit is ready pretty much all at once. So what's a simple girl from a small town to do when presented with lots of apples, that even her apple loving family can't consume before they go bad? She cans of course. I mean HELLO, this is the 21st century!


Well due to the size of our apples, we wouldn't be able to put them through our very handy Pampered Chef (c) apple corer, peeler, slicer . . . so this task, would have to be finished by hand. It is the 21 century right? Alas, with my veggie peeler in hand and a sharp knife we set off for the task.




We soaked the apples in a bath of fruit fresh to keep them from browning


Then we cold packed the jars with our apple slices.


Like with my apricots, I made a simple syrup of water and sugar (2 to 1) and filled the jars


We had to actually use the water bath method for the apples. The apricots closed nicely with the steam bath method. But after 7 minutes in boiling water, our apples sealed nice too. They also were the PERFECT texture for an apple pie (which I made for some friends on July 3) All in all we were able to can up 10 jars of apples. We left some apples whole for eating.

Happy 31st birthday Larry!!

Today is Larry's 31st birthday! To celebrate we will be going to Disneyland to get his free gift card. It will probably be the last trip to Disneyland for several months because we are blocked out all of July and most of August. But that's ok, we have lots of other stuff to keep us busy. I just wanted to wish my best friend a Happy Birthday!! I love you Larry! Thanks for being a wonderful husband and daddy to Cameron! Here's to many more!!

Here is a picture of Larry at nine months old. Without digging through tons of boxes of pictures to find his newborn picture, this is the best I could do.

Jeeping!

If it's one thing we love to do, it's Jeeping! There is nothing like having the top off the Jeep and the wind blowing through our hair. (By our, I of course mean Cameron and I ;O) ) Any way, on Wednesday the 17th, we loaded up our Jeep with snacks and drinks and took off for an undetermined destination for an undetermined amount of time. It was one of those thing were we went where the trail took us. Well, we started off at the gas station. Two things, well there are more than two, but two thing about our Jeep. A) the gas tank is dented in reducing it's size by about 5 gallons B) our gas gage doesn't work all the time . . . so before heading out for an undetermined amount of time, it's best to fill up.

We knew we wanted to head up through Batista canyon. If we're staying local, I prefer Batista to Bee Canyon any day. So we headed off. The pavement doesn't end until you hit the conservation camp. Now Cameron knows quite a bit when it comes to the inner and outer workings of the fire department, but it was quite difficult to explain, well the conversation lasted on and off the whole day, about the difference between, this fire station (the fact that it's a state prison) and other fire stations. But that's a whole other blog!

During our trek, shortly after we hit the dirt, we came across our first wildlife specimen. It was, I'm assuming, a Gardner snake crossing the road and it moved in such a particular way. It took several minutes for this snake to cross the road (hey that kind of sounds like a bad joke!) that I video tapped it, because I had never seen one move like that. We wondered for a while if it was injured, but then left it alone. I sure as heck wasn't about to play snake doctor.




We saw one other snake and several lizards along our trek also.



When we got into Anza, we stopped at the fire station to say hi . . . and use the bathroom.



As we drove down the paths we enjoyed the nice weather and the beautiful sites.









We found ourselves above Lake Hemet





The clouds were so BEAUTIFUL!!! Thunder heads were building over the mountain and the sky was SO blue!







All in all, we had a GREAT TIME! I took tons of photo's that will hopefully make their way into a scrapbook in the future.

When life gives you apricots pt.2

As you may have already read in a blog titled similar to this, you would know that we have a very healthy apricot tree. So in an interest of enjoying our apricots later, we decided to can them up. I wanted to make sure that we would be able to enjoy them, maybe even for baked goods, but didn't want to do jam again.

The first thing we did was collect the apricots


Then we halved them


We then let the halved apricots rest in a bowl with a solution of fruit fresh and water. This helps guard them against browning.


Then I made a simple syrup 2 parts water 1 part sugar



While I was making they syrup Cameron and Larry filled the clean jars with apricots. We cold packed the jars meaning the apricots had not been cooked. There for, the jars were cold too. If you hot pack the jars, meaning the item going in the jar is hot, you need to make the jars hot so they don't break. Once the jars were filled with apricots I filled in the voids with the syrup I had made.







You need to soak the flat lids in hot or boiling water to soften the rubber seal. Then place the flat lid on the jar and hand tighten the ring. Place jars into rack of canner. Normally I use a water bath method of canning. But in an effort to try and preserve the integrity of the fruit I opted for a steam method I had never used. I placed several inches of water and vinegar in the bottom of my canner. Instead of lowering the rack into the water I kept the jars above the water. I put the lid on the canner and let the apricots steam for about 20 minutes. The heat is important because it can kill any bacteria in the jars. I probably could have done this for less time, but since I had never steam bathed before, I didn't' want to take any chances.


When the jars were done in the canner I left them upside down on a cooling rack. Some of the jars hadn't sealed completely in the canner and I did this as an extra precaution to see if it would help seal (this method has never failed me yet). I am proud to say, everything sealed and we got 13 jars of canned apricots! After abou an hour of them being upside down, I righted them back to finish cooling before rinsing them off for the pantry.


Cameron wanted to help us even further by helping us label some other cans we had in the pantry. We had some apple sauce left over from a few months ago and Larry directed him on how to label it.