The fair is quickly approaching and that means my son is busy working on his projects, painting, putting together his display boards, and baking.  We baked Monday and Tuesday for open class as well as making kuchen for Fessenden orders. My son gets desperate when I make kuchen because I don’t usually make one for us so he will try to buy one from me. In the end, I try to save some dough to make a small one for him and that makes him happy. Monday was all about cookies and the rule was the recipe had to be new. We enjoyed this because it was the unknown-would they be tasty? Would they turn out? Would our dog have a lot of cookies to eat? I am sure she was hoping this…but all the recipes we tried were fun to make and really good. We made a Swedish oatmeal that is soft, a chewy coconut craisin cookie, and my new favorite, a mini-cinnamon roll cookie. On Tuesday, we made kuchen and several quick breads to freeze. To all competitive/4-H bakers out there, here’s a tip: never make your bread the day of the competition. Make it and freeze it for at least a few days because it gives the bread’s flavors a chance to marry and when it thaws out, it will be a much more flavorful bread. For entry day on Thursday, we will take it out of the freezer on Wednesday afternoon to give it 24 hours to sit. Aha! There’s where the title comes from! You will thank me when you get the blue ribbon…

Today I am heading to Fessenden and the Wells County Fair to judge the 4-H foods’ projects and am looking forward to it. It will be fun to visit with them and see what they learned through their projects. But before that, the garden needs to be tilled and the strawberries watered.  Here’s your bonus recipe for the week; it comes from tasteofhome.com:

Mini-cinnamon roll cookies:

1 c butter, softened

1 3/4 c sugar, divided

3 egg yolks

1 T +1 tsp honey, divided

1 tsp vanilla

2 1/2 c all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cream of tartar

1 T cinnamon

8 oz white baking chocolate, chopped

Cream butter and 1 1/4 c sugar until fluffy; beat in yolk, honey and vanilla.  Sift four, powder, salt and tartar and gradually add to mix. Shape a tablespoon full (I used the smallest Pampered Chef scoop) of dough into a six inch log. I mixed up the sugar/cinnamon here and rolled it in it so it wouldn’t stick so you may have to mix up more cinnamon/sugar. Coil the log into a spiral shape and place on parchment paper on your baking stone. Both of these products yield a better cookie, so if you don’t have them, get them! Sprinkle with any remaining sugar and bake at 350 for 18 minutes. While cooling, mix 1 tsp honey with chocolate and drizzle over cookies.

Here’s hoping everyone had a relaxing Father’s Day and enjoyed time spent with dads of all shapes and sizes. My husband did a little bit of everything; weed whacked the trees and mowed between them for the first time since they had been planted, helped set up my drip irrigation in the garden, and worked on his motorcycle for a bit before heading back to the oil fields. The wind has returned with a vengeance and is drying out the garden; ah, I miss those still days of last week. The strawberries are setting and need water, not wind!

We grilled yesterday (who didn’t?!) and enjoyed grilled corn on the cob. If you freeze it correctly, corn on the cob in June tastes just as good as the newly harvested corn the previous August. The kernels were plump, the flavor was sweet, and the core firm, not mushy. It’s essential to use a Food Saver or similar product to freeze it; Ziploc will not do. When we freeze this fall, I will do a video blog on this process. It’s not difficult and the results stay with you for a long time.

I’m tired. Why does it feel like a Mack truck hit me, and why do we use that phrase ‘Mack truck’? What is so special about the truck? Am I even spelling it correctly? Who exactly IS Mack?

Today we are baking for the fair, but I’m not thrilled with the moisture content in the air. Usually, I like it sunny and dry, but today it’s cloudy and feels like rain. Things don’t do well in the oven for some reason..some scientific reason I am certainly not going to entertain today-or ever. Science and I are ‘cool acquaintances’ at best, and the Hatfields-n-McCoys on any other given day. Anyways, today we are making cookies and the rule is they all have to be new recipes-no tried and true favorites, but something I have cut out of a magazine, newspaper, pintrest (the devil) or facebook. If we don’t like it, it goes. I’m weary of cutting out recipes and never trying them. Why do we do that?! Yes, you are guilty, too. We think we’re going to make it and there it sits, waiting patiently for us to do something about it. I also write on my recipes once I have made them, such as suggestions, how it turned out, what time it really took in the oven, etc. It helps for the next time-if there IS one.

So off to the kitchen I go! I was going to do this an hour earlier, but as I was typing my blog, the electricity went out; the power company was here fixing something but neglected to tell me the power would be cut. Whoops. Oh well-thankfully this program saves drafts or you would not be reading this today. I give up easily in that regard. You can only think of clever sayings once…

Have a day! Notice I didn’t say a good one, because after all, it IS Monday…

Yesterday was a gorgeous day from start to finish and reminds me why we chose North Dakota. After rising, I turned the irrigator on the strawberries and it was a perfectly still morning-no sense watering the lawn as it’s had plenty of water this spring. I mixed up a batch of herb-onion bread and headed outside. Working in the front garden was pleasant-warm sunshine, light breeze, cats lounging around, radio playing, and my dog trying to get pet whenever possible. I am convinced we have the laziest cats around. Hunting? No thanks, you feed us quite well.  We decrease their food supply and they meow incessantly. Our son was busy creating his 4-H horticulture project and it turned out well. Now it needs to grow before the end of June and with this kind of weather, it will. It was a project kind of day: mowing, creating another flower bed (you can never have too many of those), cleaning out the rhubarb, and making the bread. We ate it with bean soup for supper and the cheesecake we made a day or two ago. It is soooo good. I did my power hour in the garden, digging out the thistle (must keep ahead of it or it goes crazy) and keeping the field bind weed at bay in the strawberry patch. THERE is a weed I really despise. In the evening, we played a little basketball…and I use that term loosely. More accurately, we took turns shooting the ball, trying to beat my husband’s record of 18 shots made in a row in one spot. I got to 7 and missed. Drat. We ended the night by sitting on the porch and visiting, watching our son roller-blade on the driveway and throw sticks to the dog. Yep, North Dakota nice.

This morning is completely opposite; cloudy, windy. and threatening rain. Sounds like a good day to make jam, muffins, and more! We have a barn party to go to in Carrington tonight and am making a new recipe. I’ll let you know how it turned out and if the recipe is worth sharing. My son and I are also going to Harvey’s Relay for Life after the party to be with the Fessenden-Bowdon FFAers. Love those girls! It will be a late night for us but for a good cause. Make the most of your weekend and be someone’s sunshine…even when the sun isn’t shining. Smile!

Some days I feel like John Cougar Mellencamp’s song, “Small Town”.  Appleton, MN, is a small town and now, 30 years later, I am again  living in the small town of Carrington, ND. I have been fortunate to live in large cities in Texas and Georgia as well as Fargo during my college years so I can say both have their pros and cons.  Yesterday was the telephone company’s annual meeting and it’s an event we never miss. It’s held out at the fairgrounds (isn’t every major event in ND held at one? ) and includes rides for the kids and a walleye meal. And let me tell you, it’s delicious! Remember, my idea of fine cuisine was bullheads; we had never caught a walleye, much less eaten one, in the 70s/80s. The door prizes are always fun and this year I won a frog water fountain. Eclectic and whimsical, it will look good in my front garden. But why I love these things is all the visiting that takes place. From sitting by my good friend, Lenore the librarian (she and I can talk books for hours!), to all the people we chatted with on the way out, it took us longer to leave than the meal/meeting because we ended up stopping at every other table to catch up. While we were eating, a man asked if he could sit by us, and here it ended up being the excavator I had just called that morning! Now that is fate. Afterwards, we went to the Super Valu parking lot (Scott Steen I am thinking of you!) for the “Wednesday Night Wheels”-if you’ve got a car or motorcycle you want to show off, this is the place. The weather was gorgeous and the wheels were beautiful. We enjoyed visiting there, too, until my husband begged to go home. He had just worked two really long shifts in a row with very little sleep, so visiting had to be cut short.

This is why I like small towns; going to town is an adventure and not to be taken for granted. The friends one makes here are precious and make living out in the sticks worth it. Get out there today and make the effort to visit

I can always tell when I’ve had a hard day of work; my body screams at me the day after like a New Jersey Mafia wife-accent included. At the time, I feel great and keep pushing onto the next project, but getting out of bed the next day reminds me that maybe I should have paced myself.

Yesterday we were jammin’! After chopping all the rhubarb, we had enough for four batches of rhubarb, two of rhubarb-strawberry, and three of rhubarb-raspberry. Normally I use the Cuisinart to do the chopping; however, the blade has dulled from excessive use and we all know rhubarb needs a sharp blade. Now a decision has to be made; pay $40 for a replacement blade or buy a new one for $100? I wouldn’t mind having two of them. I use them heavily in the fall and end up washing the bowl several times throughout the day. We ended up chopping all of the rhubarb, and that took two hours I’ll never get back. Hmmm…Anyways, after making jam all morning and into the afternoon, we had leftover rhubarb, so out the cookbooks came to find a new recipe. My son made a rhubarb cheesecake and we will eat it for dessert tonight. It looks tasty!

At this point a rest should have been in order, but it was beautiful yesterday, and everyone knows the weather changes on a dime up here, so out we went. My son mowed/baled the lawn while I went out to the garden. My general rule is an hour max, but since he was mowing so nicely, there was a slight breeze (i.e. not the typical typhoon winds we have here), and the radio was playing some decent tunes (80s of course!), I stayed out too long. Before I knew it, it was after seven and we still had other things to do.

The funniest part of the day was when shower time came; since we have two hot water heaters for separate parts of the house, we will each shower in a different zone. However, my son didn’t want to shower in the ‘rec bathroom’ because there were spider webs in it. He knows the solution is to get the vacuum and suck them up, so there he was in his tighty whities, running around the house, sucking up webs.

Go out there and show Wednesday who the boss is…don’t let it slap you around!

I have a new dog-in my mind anyways-Daisy got her first ever hair cut and bath yesterday and she looks ‘mahvelous’. Yes, I had to add that to the dictionary because I can hear Billy Crystal saying it that way on SNL in my mind. With said haircut, we were able to see just how many ticks she had on her…and there were a lot. I am thankful my son is willing to pull them off because I am not; it makes me squeamish and is ranked up there with my irrational fear of spiders. Good gravy, we are how many times bigger than them and yet I can’t kill a daddy long-legs?! Really? I feel so powerful turning on the vacuum and sucking them up. I would hate to see what the canister looks like, but of course my husband has that fun job so I will never know. Ignorance is bliss. My son’s reward for pulling off ticks is to put them all in a can, pour a bit of lighter fluid in it and light a match. Yep, we are exciting here on the farm. PETA would probably call that cruel, but Daisy deserves to be tick free. We’ve been applying a certain chemical to her (I won’t tell you which one, but it has annoying commercials on TV of a talking dog in a bandana instructing the others to demand better tick control) and it is not doing its job.I should demand it do a better job and fire that dog.

Yesterday we also went to Jamestown to the small business center and began the application process of getting my business started. Exciting stuff, I tell you!

My son has gotten big enough to finally use the lawn mower and it’s so nice to have him do that while I do something productive; in this case it was drying chives. My oldest sister gave us a plant several years ago and it’s finally kicking butt and producing some tasty chives. I apologize for calling her oldest, but she will be having a birthday this month and need to rub this fact in…Back to the chives; it’s fun to see my son run outside, snip off some chives and serve them over whatever concoction we have made for the meal. Last night’s meal was no exception; our rule is to use at least one thing from the freezer per day in a meal and we had stir-fry last night. My stir-fry is never the same thing twice because in my mind, stir-fry means finding whatever is in the fridge/freezer, throw in some meat, make the rice and sweet/sour sauce and serve. We had a half bag of coleslaw mix, frozen broccoli from our garden, water chestnuts (yeah, I wish I knew how to grow them!) and cut up chicken (ours) from Saturday’s dinner. To make it fun I threw in the last of the peach salsa (about a cup)I had made last fall-I’m trying to clean the pantry out, too. We decided that was pretty yummy! And yes, we did have chives in it, too…

Today we are making rhubarb and rhubarb strawberry jam. All the jars are washed, the lids are ready to go and the Cuisinart is ready to slice. With that, it is time to get busy!

Wait, I promised a recipe. Don’t buy that horrible sweet and sour sauce in the store; it’s full of things you can’t pronounce and artificial. We made a double batch of this recipe and refrigerate whatever is left over for the next time. It lasts quite a while in the fridge-the vinegar has something to do with that. So here it is, your own recipe of sweet and sour sauce; let me know how it goes!

Sweet and sour sauce

1/2 c sugar

1/2 c chicken broth or water (I’ve used both)

1/3 c white vinegar

1 tsp oil (I’ve used olive, canola, vegetable-whatever is handy)

1 tsp soy sauce

1 clove garlic, crushed

2 T corn starch

2 T pineapple juice (see below)

small can of pineapple (can be crushed or chunks), drain, using liquid above

Heat sugar, broth, vinegar, soy sauce and garlic in a microwave safe bowl on high until boiling. Mix cornstarch and juice and stir into boiling liquid; cook until thick. Stir in pineapple and serve with stir-fry. Don’t you dare throw out the extra pineapple juice: drink it, add it to kool-aid, or make yourself a nice rum drink. If you want the red color in your sauce, add some maraschino cherry juice…Refrigerate leftovers in a jar so you can simply microwave it next time you want to use it.

We are creatures of habit; the type of clothes we wear, the way we drink our coffee, and even the place we sit in church. I have sat in the front on the left since going to church in Appleton, MN. I tried sitting somewhere else in different towns, but always gravitate back to my comfort zone. Now I have left my comfort zone and am in uncharted water; it’s a little bit exciting and a lotta bit scary. OK, terrible grammar, but it makes the point.

For twenty-three years I have ‘had the summer off’ (if you are in the school system you are cringing because you know there’s no such thing!). I loved teaching; the thrill of August, seeing the students’ faces light up when they ‘get’ something, laughing (and crying) with co-workers over something the student did and in the past five years, discovering that high schoolers can be fun to teach!

Now a new love is tugging at my sleeve. NO! It is not Channing Tatum! Enough with him already! In the 70s and 80s, Grandma Behrens, my mom’s mom, used to come out to our farm daily to help mom with us six kiddos; apparently we were (and still are) a handful… Our dog loved it because she brought scraps in a cut out milk carton; she froze everything in a milk carton-butchered chickens didn’t go in a Ziploc-they went in a recycled milk carton, thus saving money. Those days were hard work and magical; canning hundreds of quarts of beans, learning how to make a pie crust, or going fishing with Grandpa and her for bullheads. That is a favorite memory for all of us; digging worms in the garden, getting our bamboo or regular fishing poles ready, catching the fish and having Grandpa take them off the line, and finally coming home to prepare them. The boys would go outside, flip over a telephone cable, and help him gut while the girls and Grandma would fry the potatoes, shuck the corn, and get the fish fried as it came in.  Both she and mom instilled in us a love of the kitchen.

My fondest memories involve the preparation of food we grew, raised, or caught, and so I took a giant leap and retired from teaching to begin a new passion: sharing my love of baking and canning with others. We are in the process (and my it is a long one!) of converting a metal quonset into a commercial kitchen and retail area. Central City Lumber of Carrington has been a huge help in designing it and as we speak, the state health department is approving the final plans. My writing skills are being put to the test in writing a business plan and applying for grants and loans. You will be along for the journey, watching the progress from start to finish. All the while my garden isn’t going to raise itself, so those adventures will still be noted as well.

Speaking of adventures, we are taking our farm dog (read between the lines-stinky, unbrushed, etc) to town for a shampoo and summer haircut for the first time ever. I’m not looking forward to her being in my car on the way there because I know she smells like something dead; she loves rolling in the d-deceased/decayed/decomposed- and running in the slough water. We all know how yummy that smells!  I am hoping to snag some more rhubarb from the town ladies; we picked some yesterday from my sister-in-law by Stanley (thanks, Gayle!) and would like to process it all at once to make more jam. My strawberries are blooming so it’s only a matter of time…

Grab a cup of coffee and start the day!

I cannot believe it’s been nine months since I last posted. No, I have NOT had a baby with Channing Tatum, so I guess I haven’t been as busy as expected.

I will do a better of job of blogging-I know some of you base your day on the witticisms thrown around here. Based on that, YOUR last nine months must have been pretty sad!

In a nutshell, life is good. Spring finally arrived in June and I finished the last planting yesterday. When it was raining earlier this week…wait, when isn’t it raining?! Anyways, the rhubarb is growing like a weed and so rhubarb, rhubarb cherry,  and rhubarb strawberry jam were made. I have learned to bring a cooler with me when I go to any town; someone is always saying they have too much rhubarb and I will be glad to take it off of their hands. My patch is still in its infancy.

Yesterday’s dumb move:since it is finally above freezing, I wear shorts outside as much as possible to tan these fluorescent white stumps of mine. The tiller (which has not worked well for a year but FINALLY got fixed!) and I had a date with the garden which means tilling between the raspberry canes. The summer producing aren’t bad, but the fall raspberries are very painful-my legs got all scratched up and it hurt. Lesson learned. Now for the really dumb move (you didn’t think that was it, did you?): I went into the house to wash my wounds and decided to reapply the bug spray. YOWZA! My legs now were scratched and angry red. Sigh.

The garden is planted, the weeds are at bay, and we spent five hours mulching with newspaper/straw yesterday. We are tired, but the garden is looking the way it should. This abundant rain we’ve been experiencing is hard on us, but the strawberries, raspberries, and grapes are loving it. They look really good; tonight we are going to take each vine and cull to where only twenty bunches of grapes are on each one. That’s a lot of grapes. Don’t get excited-our grape stand is pretty tiny. It’s still a work in progress; we can maybe get a quart off of what we have.

STAY TUNED for exciting news on Monday. And no, I’m not going to describe how my garage sale hunting in Fessenden went today (although I may mention it if I find some steals).

I cannot believe I haven’t blogged for almost two months. It has been a blur-or maybe Alzheimer’s is a knocking at the door.  Either way, it is time to chat about my newest love. No, it’s not chocolate covered something or other. That will always be the nefarious chick on the side.  It’s butternut squash fries. We love butternut but usually just bake, smash, coat it with butter and eat it. I decided to cut them up into fries, coat with olive oil and lay in a single layer on a baking sheet. Then I sprinkled Parmesan cheese, basil flakes, and garlic salt atop and baked them at 400 for 25 mts . They were amazing…no, that word isn’t strong enough-they were EPIC. If you or your family isn’t a fan of squash, try it this way. Your kids will be hooked AND they’re good for you!  Here is a picture of them:

Other fun things made since September include cantaloupe-raspberry jam and apple pie jam. The latter is my family’s favorite on toast, biscuits, cardboard- any flat surface is fair game. Several people have given us apples and are used to make many apple treats, including an apple braid using red hots and a  lemon glaze. I didn’t think we would like it but it is really tasty!

Finally, I couldn’t end this blog without showing a Bison game day tailgating picture. When we played Southern Illinois a few weeks back, there was a ‘Stache out in honor of their coach. How could I not participate? Here’s a pic with me and two former co-workers (Mary and Troy Hegney)  from the Residence Dining Center; we had great times in the 80′s working there!

Living in the north, it is imperative to be a good driver and avoid deer; I pride myself on having not hit a one for over twenty years. We all know where pride gets you, don’t we?  Things changed on Friday; on the way to an appointment, I heard (not saw) a loud thud and there on my hood was a DUCK! What the heck was it doing flying that low???!! It’s bill got stuck in my grill (no pun intended) and it was flapping around on my hood until I stopped. Screaming was not an option, it was expected, and I did it loudly and proudly! I pulled over, grabbed my camera ( hey, not just for the blog-insurance may need proof!)  and a napkin, then headed out to get the DUCK (I still can’t believe it) off my grill. It wasn’t until I stopped for gas a few hours later I noticed my Toyota emblem had been ripped off, too. I am a little sad about that. So yes, there IS a picture at the bottom of my blog of the duck-if you don’t want to see it, don’t look! I feel for the duck, but hey, up north it’s kill or be killed-deer, ducks, etc cost people a lot of money when they run across the highway and try to tango with our vehicles.

Such a busy week! I am still making salsa but should really start thinking about making some spaghetti sauce.  We had a freeze on Friday night thus bringing an end to the cucumbers and green beans. We covered the tomatoes, zucchini and peppers and am glad we did. I have to say, covering the garden is my least favorite job; normally there are gale force winds and it’s dark out, but at least this year it was calm outside AND we did it in the light. Made things so much easier… Tonight we covered my son’s large pumpkin patch to give his big boys a chance to turn orange.  We were out there for two hours picking veggies as well as harvesting all the butternut squash and the last of the cantaloupe.  I love that stuff! When we came in we made a large fruit salad for the week using cantaloupe, grapes, pineapple, pears, and raspberries. The fall raspberries are coming slowly and usually pick a plastic one pound clam every other night.

Saturday I hung out with some classmates at our second annual “Mystery Girls’ Tour” and it didn’t disappoint. All women should go on this with sisters, friends, etc. We had seven mini-excursions on a charter bus with 50 other women including belly dancing, shopping, a cruise down the Mississippi, and eating in the St. Paul area. There’s a picture of that, too. No, not of the belly dancing. Please. That was like two walruses duking it out-not pretty-but a lot of fun with all those women laughing hard.  Look in to it! It was a beautiful day full of laughter and bonding. The hostess made some bars that were out of this world. Nope, not sharing the recipe. They were THAT good. At least it isn’t a recipe for duck soup…

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