Monkey Butter

Monkey Butter Ingredients

5 medium, perfectly ripe bananas (no brown spots), peeled and sliced
1/2 of a ripe pineapple
1/4 cup ground coconut
3tbsp lemon juice
3 cups organic white sugar

I chopped the pineapple and crushed it with the flat side of my knife.

Peel and slice the bananas and add it to the sugar, coconut, and lemon juice in a heavy pot.

Then I scraped the pineapple, juice and all, into the pot with the rest of the ingredients.

Bring it all to a boil and cook it until the bananas dissolve and the jam thickens.

Towards the end the Monkey Butter was as thick as I wanted it but the bananas were still chunky, so I used a potato masher to help them along.

Fill your jars leaving 1/4-1/2 inch headspace (sorry for blurry picture but you get the idea).

Process the jars in a waterbath for 15 minutes.

Monkey butter is delicious spread over whole wheat toast in the morning, mixed in with yogurt for an afternoon snack, or served on top of ice cream.

It's a very simple recipe that is great to practice your canning skills.

Strawberry Jam

Spring came early and the strawberries are perfectly ripe.

It's always more fun to pick with friends.

We picked around 60lbs of berries between the 3 families.

We went back to my place and set up to make jam all day. We set the campstove out on the front porch to give us more burners. This picture was taken after we were done. We did the water bath canning on the stove in the house and cooked the jam on the campstove.

Three people can make a lot of jam. The work was easier and there was only one mess to clean up.

Random Holiday Fun

We have been some cookie making fools!

We made lemon sandwich cookies, sugar cookies, and gingerbread men.

While rooting around the freezer the kids found a growth of ice crystals in a container that probably reached it's maximum storage potential. The crystals sure were pretty to study, the picture really doesn't do it justice.

The boys have been learning how to make survival bracelets. 

We hope your season has been just as bright as ours has been. 

Gingerbread Mini Village

The kids really wanted to do a gingerbread house this year. It's been a few years since we tackled the project, and this year I didn't get any sudden burst of free time. So I bought a Wilton mini village kit.


 

I was very pleasantly surprised by how easy this kit was to put together. 

I assembled the houses and the kids did all the decorating. 

They turned out amazing.

This was a great family project that I will most definitely do again next year. 

Out of Doors

Yesterday, we put together hobos and spent the rest of the evening outside.

If you've never made a hobo, here's the basics: meat, veggies (we used red potatoes, yams, carrots, and onions), seasoning, herbs, and a pat of butter all wrapped up in foil. I'm not a fan of foil. If I had a dutch oven, we would have used that instead.

You wrap the foil up tight and put it on the coals to cook. A couple of Boy Scouts made this fire, so it's too big for our little pit. We had to put our hobos right on the flames. This still works as long as you rotate the packages often and don't mind a little charbroil flavor.

While the boys kept an eye on dinner, I caught up on some gardening chores. 

My sweet pepper plants surprised me with a few last minute gifts. Up until now, my sweet peppers have not produced anything at all.

It was also time to finish harvesting the herb bed. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with my "planter" next year. Maybe I'll just keep using it as an herb bed. It did quite well. It would also be pretty for flowers.

My final bounty.

The kids set the table for us and brewed some iced tea. They worked hard to make this meal come together. They make me so happy.

Dinner was delicious. It was a very peaceful evening..

Moscato and a Book Review

After a dinner of: creamy mushroom chicken. roasted red potatoes w/ rosemary, corn on the cob, and Jasmine rice; I sat down to enjoy a great book with a glass of Moscato. It was light and tasty. Sweet but not overly so. Very refreshing with a citrus taste to it. From what I've read, Moscato is a dessert wine. I enjoyed it by itself.

 What was I reading? The first volume of Vampire Diaries by L. J. Smith. Leon and I have been having fun watching the tv series, so I picked up the book from the library. It has a lot of similarities to the Twilight Saga, though it was published in 1991 and the first Twilight book was published in 2005. I love the writing style. It's easy to read and not too melodramatic. It is also VERY different from the television show.

The series follows Elena (in the book she's a gorgeous blonde). She falls hopelessly and helplessly in love with the good-hearted, self-loathing vampire, Stefan. Doomed from the start, they face one complication after the next. Enter Damon, the confident, cool, Rhett Butler-like dark hero you can't help but love. Now both vampires are in love with Elena and are self-sworn to her protection. Although, Damon (being the darker of the two) wouldn't mind Elena joining him for eternity, a beautiful companion to heal him of his loneliness.

I finished this volume. I went to get the next volume and it is checked out. I HATE when that happens!  I'm so tempted to go ahead and purchase a digital copy, but I'll attempt to delay satisfaction until whoever-has-my-book checks it back in. I just hope they do it soon.

I compared the book to the Twilight series. They both have a love triangle with a human girl loving a vampire. The human admits she has an attraction to both her suitors. She's willing to die, even become a monster herself to protect the ones she loves.

Now, I have only read the first book in this series, but there are many differences. Vampire Diaries is more suspenseful and less predictable. I found it a little darker than Twilight. Elena is an orphan. She's also the town beauty queen. She's been raised in small town Fells Church since birth. All her classmates are lifelong friends. She also does not want to become a vampire. At least so far...

If you liked Twilight, you should definitely check this series out.

Sweet Bliss

The name is as it implies. This wine is great. It's not overly sweet, has a great fruity flavor, and finishes off with a hint of chocolate. Oh my! It went incredibly well with vanilla cake and ice cream. The contrasting flavors really set it off.

I might try it as an aperitif as the label suggests. I'll update this post and let you know how it stands alone.

Pacific Rim and a Book Review

This is a sparkling sweet Riesling. JacLynn came over for a short visit. We each took a glass to the back porch and chatted away about school, work, and politics. This was really good wine. It was light and crisp. It had a nice round berry flavor and was mildly sweet. The bubbles made it fun. I can't think of anything I'd pair it with. It was perfect all by itself as a treat.

I will definitely be getting this one again. I finished it off while reading our next book club book.

The Memory Keepers Daughter was okay. I found the style of writing to be very droll. Most of the sentences were too verby (new word I made up just for this book). It seemed that almost every sentence had 3 or more verbs. For instance:

"The streets converged, coming together at odd angles, as the city narrowed to the point where the great rivers met, the Monongahela and the Allegheny, their confluence forming the Ohio, which traveled to Kentucky and beyond before it poured itself into the Mississippi and disappeared."

or

"This had once been a quiet road, cars audible for miles before they came into sight, and usually it was a familiar face behind the windshield, the car slowing, stopping, and a door swinging open to let him in."

I'm finicky about writing style. There is only so much of the above I can take. Don't get me wrong. Such pensive writing can have it's place in every novel. When a particular method  is over used, it makes the book hard for me to read. My eyes start to skim over the redundancy.

Spoiler alert:

The over all plot was okay. I only sort of sympathized with the father in the story. Mostly I was angry with his arrogance at taking something away from his wife because of his own fears. He was a coward. I think it's a good look at how sad a life can be if we don't own up to our bad decisions despite the possible consequences. As for the wife, they laid all the blame of her promiscuity at the hands of her husband for being so distant. She was still in command of her own decisions. I did like that it wasn't just another story with a feel-good happy ending.

Gnarly Head

Leon surprised me with several bottles of wine for my tasting adventure in honor of my upcoming birthday. I like the Gnarly Head brand and they just released a new red blend, Authentic Red. I've been waiting for the stores to get it in.

I gravitate to the red blends because they are not as strong and have so many flavors going on at once. I enjoy them the most.

Authentic Red: the first thing I taste is the tangy bite of the zinfandel, but it mellows out into a nice spicy berry flavor. 

Chicken Pot Pie and Apothic Red

This is one of my favorite cheat meals. The ingredients are simple. It's my cheat meal because I used canned cream of chicken soup. If I weren't already balancing work, homeschool, and life in general, I'd take the time to make gravy for this dish. It's much better that way. As it is, we cut corners where we can. My family still loves this dish...even when I cheat.

This only takes me about 15 minutes to prepare. While the chicken is boiling I'm mixing the rest of the ingredients up. By using frozen chicken tenders,  I don't even have to cut the chicken into pieces. I just toss them in after they are done. It's also an easy way to pack a bunch of veggies into one meal.

Chicken Pot Pie Ingredients:

Chicken, cooked (I boiled 10 chicken tenders)

1 26oz can Cream of Chicken Soup

4 cups frozen mixed veggies
I season mine with garlic and Mrs. Dash (Certain people in my house are cutting back on sodium.)

Mix ingredients in a large bowl.

Crust: You can use a standard pie crust. Sometimes I cheat and buy frozen. Lately I've been making biscuits and baking them on top.

Biscuit Crust:

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon white sugar

1/3 cup butter

1 cup milk

Mix the dry ingredients then cut in the butter until it looks like cornmeal.Slowly add in milk.

Roll dough out to 1inch thickness and cut into rounds. The kids like to use the leftover dough to make "baby biscuits". Waste not, want not.

Bake at 350deg until golden and bubbly.

Tonight I served it with Basmati rice and salad. 

The wine you see, Apothic Red, is my absolute favorite so far. My friend, Errin, turned me on to it at a recent book club meeting. The bottle says its a blend of Zinfandel, Syrah, and Merlot with hints of vanilla and mocha. It's in the $10 price range that I tend to shop for. The flavor is intense but shockingly smooth.

Apparently this bottle is very popular. My local grocery store was completely sold out. I couldn't find it anywhere else. My dear friend gave me this bottle as a gift. I am really enjoying it tonight.

I know it goes against the adage of "red wine with red meat. White wine with white meat." I read somewhere to forget the "rules" when you are learning about wine. Pick what you like. I like red wine better than white. Anyway, I think I put enough garlic in the casserole to complement the red. It was very delicious.