A little yard stuff, a bit of cooking and lots of grands

Hello everyone 

We had another round of peppers ready to pick.  These grandsons had a big time helping Grandpa pick them.  

Then (again) we roasted, peeled and chopped the chilis and sliced all the bell peppers.  They’ve all been frozen to enjoy later. 

There are still jalapeños in the fridge that I plan to pickle.  

Two of our grandsons live on a small farm and raise Guernsey Show cows.  They showed one at the Tulsa State Fair and a local tv channel did a feature story on them which turned out so cute.  

My husband has been making some decorative knives.  He gets fancy wood scraps from a friend with a high end cabinet business. 

The knife parts are blanks he mail orders.  

We grow zinnias most every year.  It is really easy to harvest their seeds.  

I just trim off the flowers when they’ve turned brown.  

Then I leave them to dry for a few weeks.  

After that,  I’ll just take them apart, keep the seeds to plant next year and then throw away all the non-seed parts. 

There will be thousands of seeds once I separate.  

There could be bugs so I’m leaving the sack of zinnia heads in our tornado room to dry out.  

We mowed and edged the yard this week and we hope it’s the last mowing of 2017.  

I keep an old pair of shoes that are just for yard work.  I’ll wash them and then they’ll be ready for more yard work in the spring.  

It’s been feeling more summer like than fall like but that changed yesterday when a cold front moved into our state yesterday. 

I think it’s amazing that it was 41 in one part of Oklahoma and 94 in another at the exact same time.  

Our daughter in law is a hair stylist.  This is a recent photo shoot at her salon where her 2 daughters posed as customers.  

Both little girls have lots of long dark thick hair. 

I think these photos turned out so cute.  

I’m wondering who had the most fun,  Charlie and Andie or their momma, Sheena?  

I think it was an afternoon to remember for all of them.  ❤️

I just put our supper in the crockpot- Cowboy Casserole from Cheryl’s frugals corner. 

I think it will taste especially good on this cool fall day 🍁 I’m a big fan of simple recipes like that this that just use basic pantry ingredients. 

Blogging via Blogspot on an iPad

iPads update every few months.  When mine updated this week, I could no longer use the Blogger app that was barely limping along anyway. 

My blogs are all on Blogspot and I hear Wordpress is great but I don’t want to change right now. 

I looked online for help but didn’t find much. 

First I bought the BlogPress app but it was complete waste of money and time. I couldn’t even log into my blogs through it,mart alone post. 

Then I saw the Blog Touch Pro in the AppStore.  I bought it and it works perfectly for the kind of blogging I do. 

I can add 5 photos at a time, do links and bold or italics with ease. 

It also edits photos but I haven’t spent enough time on it to figure that out.

The only weird thing is it posts my photos so big. I had to change the margins so they would fit.  

But I like the big photos so it’s ok with me. 

The Blog Touch Pro app is $5.99 right now.  I think it was $4.99 when I bought mine last week. 🤔 

Anyway, for using Blogspot on an IPad, Blog Touch Pro is the solution I needed. 

In the Kitchen - Hello Fresh review and some homecooking

Subscription meals are very popular but I had never tried them.  

In September, I loosely followed a plan called “ShelfTember” and my goal was to use up ingredients that we’ve had for awhile.  I used up lots of oddball ingredients and freezer leftovers. I also did very little grocery shop in September. 

Near the end of September, I saw a coupon code to get your first Hello Fresh shipment at a big discount.  So, I thought we’d try it.  

Above is my 2 year old grandson sitting beside our delivery- it came by USPS.  

Near the top of the shopping crate is where these 3 bags were.  They contain the ingredients needed for each recipe.  

The shipping box was very insulated with several ice packs.  

The fresh meat was in the bottom. 

All the cold ingredients were very cold when delivered and they stayed fresh in our fridge until I cooked them.  

Hello Fresh sends very easy to follow recipe cards and nutritional information.  

Inside the brown paper bags, are the exact ingredients needed for a recipe. 

(At home, you will need to have basic cooking tools with salt, pepper and cooking oil) 

Below is the ingredients is for Sesame Beef Tacos.  

This plat contains 2 of the sesame beef tacos and we added Homemade refried beans from our freezer.  

This was our favorite of the 3 meals ( but we truly enjoyed all of them) 

We’d never cooked cabbage with our taco meat or had pickled vegetables on tacos. The Korean Red pepper flakes were a new spice to us, it is hot but mostly just spicy and delicious, 

This is our Sizzling Hoisin shrimp.  

My husband said “fabulous, absolutely fabulous” will he was eating,  

Our last meal was Creamy Dill Chicken,  the sauce was so good! 

We won’t be regular Hello Fresh customers but we did enjoy these 3 meals.  

I may order again we have a staycation or if we take a vacation and stay in a condo.  

The food is restaurant quality,  the meals are easy to prepare.  

I do plan on sending a gift certificate as a wedding gift for a couple of med school students that getting married this fall.  

An

This week, I baked 2 batches of sandwich buns and 2 loaves of pecan raisin bread.  

I also made some spreadable butter for the first time.  

I beat together 1/2 pound softened butter with 1/2 cooking oil in the mixer and then stored it in little Pyrex containers.  

So far, it’s great.  It is easy to spread on our morning toast.  

We cut what it probably our last watermelon of 2017.  

It was a really good one! ,

Have a wonderful weekend everyone ❤️