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Halloween Homage

Halloween is getting closer! I’ve decided on my costume for our annual Halloween party. I can’t disclose it here until after the party because certain family members like the element of surprise.

I’m finally starting my much delayed vacation. I have two solid weeks off from work and I am trying very hard not to check my work email. It’s tough. I hope the place doesn’t fall to pieces while I’m gone.

Today it’s off to the storage locker to pull out the Halloween decorations. Time to get in the spirit of things.

Puttering

It’s been rather dull around the Blue Moon household this weekend. Blissfully dull. No deadlines, no commitments. Just plenty of time to putter around in between flopping on the couch to read or surf.

We just had our floors refinished so all of the furniture that normally resides in the in dining room, kitchen, eating area or laundry room was temporarily housed in the living room. I started having flashbacks to when we first moved into this house and we were doing a major remodel. No place to sit peacefully and not stare at a stack of pots and pans for months on end.

It was around the holidays and I told Rick and the contractor that I needed the living room cleared out of any extraneous objects for one full week. I didn’t care where they put the stuff but I needed the living room to look normal so I could put up a Christmas tree and decorate. They did it too ~ I had one room that looked finished and normal. I was good on my word as well, and had that tree down and all the decorations put away on December 26th.

This wasn’t nearly so painful. The floor only took a couple of days to cure and everything was put back yesterday. Less than a week.

I did take advantage of having the china cabinet emptied of its belongings and re-papered the interior. This cabinet belonged to Rick’s mother and since I feel like it’s ‘his’ I wouldn’t permanently alter it. I used to have pale grey and white striped wallpaper lining it but it was getting brittle and had water stains from lord only knows what. I just tacked and taped the paper along the back wall and bottom of the cabinet.

Rick liked the stripes better but I think this is cheery and okay for now. Wallpaper, because it is heavier, is much better to work with. One of these days I’ll do it properly and cover the sides and shelves as well.

This time I just used a roll of wrapping paper. Just a little tape at the top and sides and the shelves hold it in nicely. It’s not perfect but when the doors are closed who cares?

Dumpy apple dumplings

This is another one of those full disclosure type posts. I admit to never let a pesky little thing like being 100% accurate get in the way of telling a story. Not so much embellishing to make a story better – more like leaving out details that might dull it and make it ordinary.

What I do here is story telling, really – not news delivery. So while this blog isn’t fiction it certainly isn’t CNN either.

I would like you to believe that my house is always sparkly clean and smelling of freshly baked things but the truth of the matter is that my baking attempts are failures more often than not and that I am a disaster in the kitchen when I’m cooking.

Take my apple dumplings for example.

I was trying to recreate a flaky little delicacy I had at the little sandwich shop Sara and I stopped at in Weeds. Their version was about the size of small baseball, filled with cinnamony apples and the flaky pastry was judiciously drizzled with just the right amount of glaze. It was really cute and really delicious and I ate it before my sandwich even arrived.

My attempt. Well there you have it. My seams came undone, my filling was too runny, and I forgot to buy more powdered sugar for the glaze. I don’t know how to keep them rounded like the one I had in Weeds. Maybe bake them in a large muffin pan?

I don’t always keep my cookbooks all piled up on the counter like that. We are having our floors refinished and we needed to move all the furniture off the hardwood floors. So the contents of bookcases, baker’s racks and china cabinets have been temporarily moved to any available surface.

Astute readers will also notice that we STILL don’t have a backsplash in the kitchen. It’s been, what? Over two years since we started the kitchen remodel.

Okay – I think that is enough disclosing for the time being.

Saturday

My horoscope this morning as read to me by my husband "A difficult situation will begin to ease up soon. You’ve been toughing it out pretty well, but soon you can relax."

Works for me. I do like the part "You’ve been toughing it out’ with the qualifier "pretty well." I guess whining isn’t really toughing it out.

It is a foggy, Fall morning here. I do wish we had brought in the furniture cushions BEFORE the torrential rain yesterday. Hey – those of you that have been on my back deck – look at what Rick did – he cut the overhang back to just be a stand alone trellis. It really makes the kitchen area much brighter. Letting all that foggy light in.

And looking down the driveway towards the street (what looks to be a levitating skateboard is actually a swing made out of an old skateboard):

Today we are going to putter. I changed out the summery bed linens for cozier bedding. I pulled out the red flannel quilt for one of the guest rooms. You know we’re hunkering in when the red quilt comes out.

Anyone want to come visit me? We can sit by the fire and drink wine and then you can snuggle under red flannel. I can feel myself starting to relax already.

Keeping with the red theme I ordered this print from Keep Calm Ltd. It’s going to be my new motto. I originally saw it on the Oh Joy! blog and kept going back to it. Very sensible motto, if you ask me.

Amish Friendship Bread

I was all set to do a post on my Amish Friendship bread. But then I realized my camera is not with me. So you get a blurry, cell phone picture.

While Sara and I were in Oregon we were both given Amish Friendship bread starters. Since we were given them at the same time, of course we are both ready to bake at the same time. You can read her story and see her much better pictures on her blog.

Yesterday was the day – to make new starters and to bake two loaves of bread. I actually was going to be stingy with my starters and make four loaves of bread but ran out of time. I made the classic vanilla version (shown above) and some with dried cranberries. I want to make a lemon version and one with dried apricots next.

Amish bread is very simple. First, you need a friend. Someone that will give you the starter so you can get going. It’s kind of the culinary equivalent of a chain letter, really. You get the starter, nurture it for 10 days, then divide it up into four new starters (and the left overs go into your two loaves of baked bread) that you then pass onto three friends, reserving one starter for yourself, starting the whole process over again. After a while, I imagine, you become like those people that grow zucchini that everyone else begins to avoid. Oh no – here comes Andrea with that bread starter again. Quick! Duck down and don’t answer the door….

Next time I will make more loaves. I hear they freeze wonderfully. I just need to figure out what the left over amount is that goes into the baked batch. I’ll just keep one starter for myself and bake up the rest.

Of course right now I have four starters going – so I may have about 80 loaves of bread in ten days.

Anyone want an Amish Friendship bread starter?

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