In The Kitchen | Chickens in the Road

Archive for the ‘In the Kitchen’ Category

Nov
2

Giveaways, In the Kitchen

I wish I could say I wanted to make pumpkin butter yesterday, but I didn’t really. I’ve had such a busy week, with so many interruptions, and I have a proposal due in a couple weeks. I need to write! But my cousin’s mother needed to make pumpkin butter for the church bazaar and she wanted me to help her. GAH! STRESS! DEADLINE PANIC! Okay. She asked me to go to the store for the ingredients, then she asked me to read the directions and measure everything. (Did I volunteer to make pumpkin butter for the church bazaar? No! There’s a reason I didn’t volunteer to make pumpkin butter for the church bazaar! GAH! STRESS! DEADLINE PANIC!)

She sat down in a chair in the kitchen while the pumpkin butter was simmering and said suddenly, “I’m going to have to stop driving.”

Knock me over with a feather. Now, I’ve thought this was coming, or should be coming, ever since we were planting corn this spring and she asked me to check if she’d planted one row because she couldn’t remember and she couldn’t see the seeds. That’s when I decided she didn’t need to pick Princess up from school anymore. But my cousin’s mother is very active, very involved in the community, and she had a therapy a while back that was supposed to improve her eyes. (She has macular degeneration.) Then I realized she hasn’t driven anywhere all week. The therapy for her eyes isn’t working. That’s why she needed me to pick up the ingredients for the pumpkin butter. She’s not just getting ready to give up driving, she’s already given up driving. She handed me the recipe because she couldn’t read the directions, and she gave me the measuring cups because she couldn’t measure. She wanted me to help her with the pumpkin butter because she couldn’t make it without me. And I was so busy thinking about how much of my time this was taking up that I hadn’t even realized it. GAH! BAD! GUILTY!

And you know what? It didn’t take that long, it made the house smell really yummy, and it tasted good, too. And I wanted to learn how to make pumpkin butter, I just didn’t want to learn how to make it yesterday. But you know what else? Someday I’m gonna need someone to read the pumpkin butter directions to me, too.

PUMPKIN BUTTER
1 29-ounce can pumpkin puree
3/4 cup apple juice
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 1/2 cups white sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg

Bring mixture to a boil. Reduce heat, simmer for 30 minutes, stirring constantly. Spoon into jars, cover with metal lids and screw on bands. Process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes. (If you double this, it’ll make four pint jars or eight half-pint jars.)

In other news, I woke up at 12:15 and there were all these weird noises. At first I thought it was outside, then I realized the noises were coming from Princess’s room. Then no, not Princess’s room–the wall BETWEEN my room and Princess’s room. Something was inside the wall. Making scratching, clawing, chewing noises. Only in the upper half of the wall. And it was moving back and forth across the wall. Chipmunk? Mouse? Squirrel? DEMON???? Oh, and the cats? My 548 cats? Nowhere to be seen. I feed them WHY????

Giving away this weekend: a November 2007 Silhouette Romantic Suspense release, Sleeping with Danger by Wendy Rosnau. Let me know if you want it. And if you know how to slay demons. Either one.

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Posted by Suzanne McMinn @ 7:13 am | Permalink

Oct
25

In the Kitchen, My Precious Darlings

THIS IS NOT AN ANNUAL PARTY.

Last year I swore we weren’t going to do this again, and yet we did. Princess was sure that doing it once made it annual, and doing it twice is bound to make it a tradition.

The party menu included chili dogs, chips, pumpkin cupcakes, and of course, graveyard cake. How to make graveyard cake–take one chocolate fudge cake mix, bake, top with chocolate fudge icing and chocolate sprinkles. Stick oval-shaped vanilla sandwiches cookies in the cake for tombstones–write things on them like Eat Me! Help! RIP! I’m Alive! (It’s hard to write legibly on little cookies. I used Betty Crocker Food Writers. Princess came up with some Spy University FoodDoodlers–they worked really well, too.) This year’s cake is decorated with marshmallow ghosts, skull lollipops, and gummy bones. This is how I decorated last year’s cake.

CHEAP TOLIET PAPER IS GOOD FOR SOMETHING.

Halloween party games! The mummy wrap–pair the kids up and give them some toilet paper. One is the wrapper, one is the mummy. This year I let them have two rolls of toilet paper each and the mummes were really wrapped. I let them all grab candy afterward and you should have seen the mummies busting out of that toilet paper!

NO, NOT THE PUPPY!!

The teenagers didn’t want the puppy to feel left out.

AFTER THIS GAME, THEY SMASHED ALL MY PUMPKINS.

Pumpkin relay–divide into teams. The team that can go back and forth balancing the miniature pumpkin on their head the fastest wins.

Then while I wasn’t looking for a minute, they came up with bats out of nowhere and smashed all my pumpkins and gourds. I think they thought that was more fun than anything. I was bereft.

Other entertainment included water balloon fights and jumping in giant leaf piles. Here, Princess is prepping a leaf pile for the party. Of course, since she is easily distracted, she stopped to practice her professional rake balancing act.