Making caramels and hard candies has been something I was never good at. Until we got a candy thermometer. It makes it much easier to watch the temp and get the perfect consistency.

I tried it with these caramels and they turned out so yummy! I love the combination of the sugar and the salt. I used pink peppercorns, lemon flavored sea salt, and Himalayan pink salt.

Pink peppercorns have an almost citrus flavor, you need a bit more of it to taste than the salt. My personal fav is the himalayan rock salt.

Salt and Pepper Caramels

1 C. butter

2 1/4 C. brown sugar

2 C. cream

1 C. light corn syrup

1 tsp vanilla

rock salt or crushed pepper (2 tbsp of each)

Line an 8x8 baking pan with buttered tin foil so the edges hang over. In a heavy sauce pan, melt butter, add sugar, cream, and syrup. Mix well.

Stir mixture over heat until it is a boil. Lower heat to medium. With a candy thermometer boil mixture at a steady rate until the heat reads 248 degrees (about 40-50 minutes)

Remove pan from heat. Stir in vanilla. Quickly pour caramels into pan. Cool and cut into squares (place in refrigerator to speed up cooling and make for easier cutting, after it comes to room temp)

Press squares into rock salt or crushed pepper until the tops are coated. Wrap each in plastic wrap. Store up to 2 weeks in the refrigerator. Makes 64 small squares or 30 large.

Dolmades

I used the Grape Leaves!

Back in July, on my parents farm, we harvested (prolly the last growth) of grape leaves from my mom's vines. While this was a little late in the season for the picking, they still looked really nice and I was very excited to have them in the winter to use with the large amounts of hamburger we tend to have in our freezer.

I rinsed the leaves in plenty of water to remove any salt from the canning (very gently!) I'd say 80% turned out with no rips or tears. The larger leaves work the best, so next year we'll have to make sure to pick the big ones!


To make dolmades you simply mix ground beef (or lamp or pork or a mixture!) with uncooked rice and spices. Wrap the mixture in the grape leaves, like you would an egg roll or burrito, it's about a table spoon per large leaf, don't overfill.

Then placing any ripped leaves on the bottom of a dutch oven, drizzle with a little bit of olive oil and place the wraps on top. Cover with about an inch of water, and then cover again with a bowl or large plate. You want the rice to cook and the beef to steam, but not in to large of an area, ideally with some weight on them. This worked for me with the dutch oven and a glass plate, but you could also use a small sauce pan with a tight lid I would think.

After about 30 minutes the water will have evaporated and the dolmades will be cooked.

I didn't add enough spices to the meat mixture, so make sure you make it very flavorful, with oregano, mint, dill or another green herb. Lots of things could be used as a spice.

The leaves were so tender and just fell apart with a fork. Can't wait to try these again!

Knitting

I jumped on the knitting track again (after about 10 years) this Christmas to make my sister some fingerless gloves and a scarf.

I made two pairs of gloves as a intro back into knitting, watching a lot of videos from KnittingHelp.com

I came up with a pattern based on cording and dropped stiches to make it look a little looser and more crochet-like.

I really like the color of green of this yarn. Hopefully it goes well with a lot of her things!

I followed Posie's advice on water blocking to stretch the scarf out. For a ironing board and saftey pins, it worked about as well as it could have! :) I can really see where a dedicated board would work nicely.

Not sure I could get the best pictures of it, some of the cording is lost in this photo, but you can see in the blocking how the pattern looks :)

Memories

I went through some old photos last year to make Christmas presents for my family. I used MyPublisher.com to make a photo book from pictures on both sides of my parents, going back 2 generations and up till their wedding.

Some of the photos came from my parents, some from my late grandmother, and others from my paternal grandma's mother's (my great grandma) photo albums. Those photos were so old and falling apart that you had to scan each page individually, since the pictures were glued to the pages.

The books turned out really nice, the site is so easy to use and I would highly recommend it for your next project.

Here are some of the photos of me, which I did not include in the gifts, but I loved and had to scan anyway. I have no idea what me and my mom are making in the above photo. Any guesses? What ever it is, there is a lot of it!

Here's my dad and I working on something. Again, not really sure what it was. Maybe a bird house or a crayon box... He's so fashionable in his pearls, don't you think?

This last photo is from Northern Wisconsin where I grew up. This was my first attempt at a business. We lived too far out for a Lemonade stand to be productive, so instead my mom helped me grow Status flowers and other dryable items. We would bunch them together or weave them into flower crowns and sell them at a local town on weekends.
My sister, brother, and I were all homeschooled for parts of our childhood. I learned so much during that time. A lot of lessons I could only know through personal growth and inner retrospection.

Poem on the Poster: From my Garden, Soft and Bright, I picked these Flowers for your Delight, In the Sun that the Flowers Love, I hope you like these flowers of fun.

Apparently poetry was not my strong suit…. Sorry mom.

Get that Latin Feeling...

I work with a wonderful woman named Amalia as a fun side job. I met her through my volunteering at the local Arb classes. Her site has some really wonderful Latin dishes that you can print right off.

Over the past year I've made some of those yummy Latin dishes with her. My favorite is this very simple Black Bean tortilla side dish. It goes with anything and is great for leftovers.

Mix mashed black beans with Queso Blanco cheese till just together. Heat small corn tortillas on a medium heat, then fill with the mixture and grill at a higher heat with olive oil till just browning. (Heating them first makes them less brittle)

The first picture is from a Chili Rellenos that I made with a beef filling and spicy cheese. I'll try to put that recipe up at some point. It was really really yummy also.

Enjoy the last snows of winter! (Hopefully) The husband and I are on a countdown to a vacation to Ireland and Scotland this spring.... 39 days and counting!

Tomato Bread

We are a little snowed in here in Minnesota. The above pic is my sister who visited from Tenn last week when we got a bit of snow. The piles are at least 3x as high now. We got 17 inches over the weekend and are still digging out. Ish.

So over the weekend we stayed inside, wrapped christmas presents, watched some movies, and generally tried to stay warm.

We have a lot of left overs and freezer items this time of year. One of those things is frozen pesto and tomato sauce.

A good, simple recipe that I made a few months ago was this tomato bread. You just make (or buy) bread dough, cover it with pesto sauce, slice it into strips, roll it up and place ontop of sliced tomatoes. As it bakes the tomatoes roast into the bread.

Turn it over and serve :)

Ice Chest

Over the Veteran's Day weekend we took a trip up to my parents cabin in Northern Wisconsin. We try to get up atleast once a season and this was our last chance before the snow set in.... or so we thought.

Thursday was sunny and windy. Friday was filled with Antiquing and clouds. We had decided to take the plunge and get the beautiful Antique turn of the century Ice Chest we had seen in Hayward area (a 30 min drive north) on our last trip to the cabin. We would get up early, walk the dog, drive up and *hopefully* it would still be there, purchase it if we could get the right price, and make it back in time for the Iowa Football game.... or so we thought.

Saturday morning it snowed.

A big snow storm that left us wondering if making the slippery trip north, which would take us much more than 30 minutes, was worth it.

I have to say I think it was :) I'm super excited to have my Ice Chest! Yes the roads were slippery, we almost went off a few times. Yeah, we missed some of the Iowa game, but they were horrible this week and ESPN went out because of the snow anyway.

But we now have this!

The chest was built in Eau Clarie, WI some time before 1910. It has the original hardware, kick board on the bottom, inserts, and was refinished by the Antique dealer we bought it from after he purchased it in an auction in Northern Wisconsin. He said he drug it out of an old basement where it had been sitting for who knows how long.

It's in our 4 seasons porch right now. I'm planning on storing serving platters and other kitchen items in it after I finish cleaning the inside and airing it out a bit.

I read that coffee will help remove any of the musyness from the wood. Hopefully it helps a little bit. I think it must have sat in that basement for awhile!