Shed Hunting anyone??

Well hows this for some afternoon entertainment mountain style? Jack and I went antler shed hunting and we actually found one. It is a 5 point left side antler. We found it in our woods on President's Day! I also took some other interesting photos. One is a hawk (I think) feather one is Jack and the antler at the beaver pond, and the other is ice on our very small creek. All in all a very successful walk.

Scorpion

Scorpion
Originally uploaded by anglerove

Here is a photo of a Scorpion snowmobile that is very similar to the one we had growing up. We had so much fun with that machine. My Dad and I got into lots of mischief with it. Not to mention the fun I had with my friends with it. We had an old car hood we used to drag behind the sled. It might not have been the safest arrangement but it sure was fun.

We had 2 of these. One was short and light like the one in the picture and the other was long and heavy. I was always partial to the short one.

What great memories.

Chocolate Coffee Cupcake

Chocolate Coffee Cupcake
Originally uploaded by mejika

I am making cupcakes similar to these for Saint Paul Lutheran church's Pork and Sauerkraut dinner on Saturday Jan 31. The recipe comes to me from school and is adapted to make 30 cupcakes or one very full 9x13 pan of cake.
the recipe follows:
Oven 360
Flour 3 cups
Sugar 2 1/4 cups
cocoa 1 cup
Baking soda 1 Tablespoon
Baking Powder 2 teaspoon
salt 1/2 teaspoon
Mix dry ingredients together

eggs 3
2/3 cup vegetable oil
1 1/3 cup milk
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1 1/13 cup hot coffee

Measure veg oil and milk together add vanilla and eggs , slowly mix this into the dry ingredients (using an electric mixer) Add the hot coffee last. Batter will be runny.

This makes a very moist and delicious cake!

You can top it off with some Peanut Butter icing:

This recipe comes to me from Marie Moore's Grange cookbook
submitted by Jackie Clabaugh

1 cup milk
4 heaping tsp flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter or margarine
1/2 cup crisco
1 tsp vanilla

Boil milk and flour until thick. Let cool. Add rest of ingredients. Beat for 4 minutes. Add Peanut Butter to taste ( I think I used around 3/4 of a cup)

This is a delicious combination! I heartily reccomend it!!

Baking

Today we had a snow/ ice day. I started the day off by talking to a friend of mine who I have not spoken to in 3 years. It was great to reconnect with an old friend. Hopefully, we will stay in better contact with each other. After my telephone conversation I moved on to baking cupcakes for St. Paul Lutheran church's Pork and Sauerkraut dinner which is this Saturday. I used a great recipe for chocolate cake that I got from school. See the post above this one for the recipe!

Christmas is over and the tree is put away. Now we can look forward to planning the garden of 2009. This is a photo of our efforts from 2008. We are enjoying corn, green beans, pickles pumpkin and tomatoes from last years efforts. Hopefully, we will expand our green thumb this year and have more home grown vegetables for the pantry.

In the fall I took a class on canning tomatoes and jams and jellies. I am looking forward to trying these tecniques this year. Previously, I have only frozen our bounty. I will have to let you know how it turns out.

This spring I am planning on taking a class on Microsoft Word and Excel spreadsheets. It is a 6 week course. Hopefully, I will be able to get something worthwhile from the course. We shall see.

Merry Christmas and Happy Snow Days!

Hello! this installment finds us at home for 2 consectutive snow days in mid December. jack and I were able to get the tree up and bake cookies. We also did some cleaning up around here. We had rain and ice yesterday and it snowed this morning.

Here Comes Winter

Yesterday I was taking pictures of our Jack-O-Lanterns from this year and today we have a snow day!!! I was not prepared to hear that news this morning. It is not even November yet and we have had our first snow day! We may still be in school in July! This year the school board only gave us 1 day to make up snow days. All others must be added to the end of the school year!