Countdown has begun

Well, it is finally close to being here:  Brooks comes home from the hell hole of the world in a few days, hopefully for good, and his sister's wedding happens in a few days.  I have six major things to get done before I leave for Italy on October 3rd and that does not include packing which also has begun.  The first of the six is the dentist this morning and that is not to be fun...none of the six will be all that giddy inducing, but all are necessary.  Beth says there are 70 people coming to the wedding in Italy.  Can you believe that many people are making the effort to go that far to celebrate with us?  Must be good friends and good family. I have a new phone and a back-up portable battery charger, so the pictures will be flying right from the start.  I am traveling alone but when I get to Rome and the baggage pick-up Johnna, my daughter-in-law, and her sister arrive supposedly fifteen minutes later from a different flight and will meet me for the pick -up of the tour guide.  I am certain they will not leave me miserably riding the luggage carousel for hours on end.  It's detailed but workable.

I have begun to really enjoy the Pioneer Woman on Food network TV. I'm sure you have all seen her programs.  Her recipes are really doable and she is easy to watch as she prepares her dishes.
  On the other hand, I am waiting with impatience for the fall line up of programs.  Why can't they get good summer shows? With all the talent available, why do we have the trash that is on during the summer?  Beth and I are going to the Downton Abbey movie right away.  We are looking forward to it.

Saturday Joe, Glenda, and Kathy will be here for the game and over night.  I think I am making chili for when they arrive because with the band show before the game and the long game, they will get hungry. Busy time at Many Branches...no time to get old, stay on foot and be active I say. 

Birthday month...and odds and ends month

Andy, Matt, and Nate all have close together birthdays in September. We will take them out to eat at some point. Sunday I think.  I, on the other hand, am counting down the list of what I have left to do before my big trip.  Six things still to go.  I got the luggage squared away thanks to the Russians at Dr. Shoe.  Those guys are not all that loveable, but they know their stuff. One is nicer than the other, but they are so busy there is not time to glad hand.

I made Chuy's (copy cat) marinade for chicken today and have some chicken strips soaking up the luscious concoction. What I am looking forward to is tomorrow night's supper.  
Baked steak, mashed potatoes, and peas.  Old fashioned and delicious. Today I put together a multi-layered tasty salad and sent Andy off to school lunch- satisfied.

Brooks will be home in less than ten days.  I know he will be glad to get out of that hell hole. He and Carly have been planning a spring wedding from afar.

A week from Saturday Joe and Glenda make another appearance along with Kathy.  Kathy, her dad, and Andy will go to the band show, Andy then comes home and Joe and Kathy go off to the game on Andy's season tickets. There will be a steady stream of Cincinnati family coming for the games this fall as they have for several years.

I am in a fall slump which happens nearly every autumn.  I do hate to see the summer fly past me. I'll get over it, but the process is not pretty. 

Week- end fun

Joe and Glenda just pulled out of the driveway for home.  We had such a good weekend visit with them.  Andy and Joe got to try out the new seats for the OSU games and they found them front and center.  Andy has had season tickets for years and years (he's that old). Glenda and I had the whole afternoon to catch up on the news of the family. We ate well... I had prepared a lot of food ahead of time which was too much as usual.  So, no cooking this week.

We are so happy Brooks will be home from Iraq in a few days. So glad that's over.  He has many decisions to make now for his up coming wedding in the spring. We think it will be in Nashville and since we have never been there, we are looking forward to enjoying that adventure.  We do love weddings.  They are so much fun.

Alyssa's wedding, due to good planning, is moving right along.  I am still waiting for my trip (Italy) plans package which is to arrive Federal Express.  I don't think we are getting the service that is necessary from AAA Florida. The agent has personal problems and it has thrown him off course and I don't like it! I am 81 and need to know what is in front of me travel-wise. Plus he has me booked on American airlines and they are in two kinds of trouble at present.  I am sure it will work out eventually, but not quick enough for my liking.

This was a beautiful week-end weather-wise as well as company wise. Fall is beautiful, but summer is way too short.  I miss it already.

I lied about the cooking.
Fried rice with Singapore noodles

Sure way to Andy's heart

Andy loves my homemade granola.  He pines for it when it is gone.  Since I use two big boxes of old fashioned oats, the job to make this item takes a lot of time. It is worth it to see the joy he displays when it is finished and ready to be sampled.

It is Labor Day but it does not seem like it.  I am used to a big crowd of family being here but the day crept up on me and I did not realize it was near until a couple of days ago. Well, another time, but not before these trips.  I got the suitcases out today to give them a going over.  I took five to Mr. Shoe who worked on the zippers and anything else that needed doing.  The trouble is the biggest one that I need has zipper pull issues.  So back over we go to get that fixed. (I am glad I am not planning this wedding.  I worry about zipper pulls and Alyssa worries about the important stuff.)

The finished product:

There will be at least six trays like this when I’m done. I’ve gone crazy. Posy is after the fallen oats.

Hash brown uses

Yesterday I made a new discovery.  I wanted the fish chowder to be a bit thicker so I added something not normally meant for soup.  You know the hash browns at McDonald's?  Well, Trader Joes sells them in the frozen food section and they are delicious and a perfect shape to be used in breakfast casseroles, frittatas, or oven bakes. As my fish soup was simmering I took out several of the frozen oval slabs and put them in the soup...hoping for the best.  I went back five or ten minutes later and they had separated and spread through out the soup themselves looking like grains of rice.  It was a delicious thickening concoction. I also added Sriracha to the fish soup giving it a nice kick along with some Worcestershire and soy sauce. That is why I like autumn cooking.  You can really let yourself go on these dishes and they are very forgiving.

Labor Day came in a rush this year.  I only realized it was nearly here a couple of days ago.  So, our holiday will be a quiet one, a relaxing one.  I hope Madeleine comes to visit to do puzzles with me. She is a hoot.  Some of the things she expresses are so funny coming out of a two-year-old's mouth. Yesterday she and her father were at Trader Joe's and Matt's car would not start.  Matt called his dad for a jump and when Mike got  there Madeleine announced for all to hear "It's broke!"

Our son, David, and his family live on the path of Dorian.  Today is his birthday, so not a nice way to spend it getting ready for a hurricane.

The Girl who lived Twice by David Lagercrantz is a really good read. You have probably read some of his work; The Girl in the Spider's Web...a Lisbeth Salander feature. Well, she's back and mad as ever.

Fall recipes

Although Cook's Corner is not such a draw  (for me) anymore, the Columbus Dispatch has started giving a nice seasonal insert in the Sunday paper. Today they out-did themselves with their Fall cookbook offering forty-six pages of well placed and well thought out recipes for the entertaining season. It's a keeper.  I have already discussed it with a fan of the paper's cooking section and we agree it is worth having in our recipe book repertoire.

Beth and I are running around this afternoon.  Andy is clearing out some container gardens and Mike is working on the ashes in the basement fireplace.  He has the worst job and Beth and I have the best.  We have never used the basement fireplace (I don't like basements, even nice ones.) So the ashes are very old, maybe 80 years old and they have popped the ash door open to my chagrin. Well, that's not a big problem, so I'll file that in the 'forget it' column for now.

Posy has reclaimed the top dog entitlement honor now that Wiston has died.  Posy is the oldest and once held the title for a year or two and then Winston decided he was a male and the name was his.  Now it is just Posy and little Bella and Bella does not care for titles, she is simply a sweet dog.

Well, I am off with Beth to buy a dust mop and Gorilla glue.  How exciting is that? I hope there is something better out there to tempt me, but who knows?

News of sorts

Andy and I are running around today.  We are heading to Sam's...which reminds me of a Cosco bit that was on the Internet.  It seems Cosco has quite a following.  People are wild to go there.  In the comments, and there were many and mostly funny were a couple that made me laugh out loud:
  "I went to Cosco today and bought the Cleveland Browns and a helicopter."
 "I went to Cosco today and the parking lot was empty.  I thought I had missed the rapture."

We had our last BLTs last night.  The tomatoes are officially done.  The squirrels are back to hurling the left overs at us from high in this one huge oak tree. Andy can be seen clearing out the yellow, very dry, vines.  It's a sad sight. Now that that's done I am going to slim down for Italy.  Although wine is not my first choice, I plan to make it my first choice on this trip. Pasta is not my first choice either, but seafood is, so I am looking forward to that treat as well.

Joe and Glenda are coming up for a few days.  The OSU games are about to begin and there will be several Saturdays of Lechlers visiting and attending the games from Cincinnati.  Andy has chosen different seats this year and is hoping they are as good as what he has had from previous years.  Now, the band show before the game is his favorite part of the Saturday game event.  He has also started his OSU classes.  This term is all about the environment.

ADT is coming today to update the security system concentrating on the outdoors.  They are hard wiring  everything so that we do not have to worry about changing batteries (which we are not good at.) It's a sad state of affairs that some people cannot keep their hands off of things that do not belong to them.  Creeping around not only at night on the property, but now days even in the daylight. Brazen!

Robber alert

There is never a dull moment at Many Branches. So much has been going on since July 4th that I forgot to tell you the latest.  One morning a couple of weeks ago we got up and there were garden tools strewn around the yard and some even in the pool.  But the glaring thing was the absence of our golf cart which we use to get to the far reaches of the property and to use as a garden cart.  It was gone, key and all, of course.  The double wrought iron gate was open and away the robber went on a stealing spree covering several miles.  What he did not realize was there are cameras everywhere and they caught him driving up in a golf cart, getting out and shining a light inside various cars to see what he could steal.  He had loaded a 24 pack of water that he had stolen on the back and it made for an entertaining video which shot around Columbus and on Facebook like crazy. At 7:00 am I called Clinton Township police and they sent a guy out almost before I could get dressed for the day.  Within four hours they had located the golf cart sitting incongruously in front of a dilapidated apartment complex and the policeman who found it drove it to the police station. (How it still had power is amazing because we are talking miles.) They called to let us know they had found it and I then called Eric, our yard man, who owns a flat bed to ask him to pick it up.  Then I thought I had better not send two strangers to a police station with a flatbed truck to pick up a stolen golf cart.  So Andy rode with our Mexican friends to the police station and now it is home safe and sound and we got 24 bottles of free water which we are afraid to drink...never know where it has been.

Note:
I just finished The Secret Letter by Debbie Rix.  It was a beautiful and compelling story.

BLTs, leaves, and blue cheese dressing

Andy is wild about BLTs.  There is no other way to write it.  When tomatoes are in season I don't have to do much cooking because there is always bacon in the fridge and tomatoes at the ready. (Maybe not as many this year but still enough to please Andy.) Any way you cook bacon it makes a mess.  The oven is the least intrusive. However, for some reason some of the flavor is  missing. Well, there is bacon in the oven this morning, the tomatoes are sliced, the toast is in the toaster, the fresh basil leaves are plucked, and the mayo is ready to spread...it's BLTs this Saturday lunch.

Already Andy is grinding up the leaves with the mulcher.  The leaves are dropping really early this year and that is sad to see.  I do get sad in the autumn for some strange reason. I shouldn't there is so much to look forward to such as another great-grandaughter, a trip to Italy and a trip to visit Beth's family for Thanksgiving in New Orleans. (My motto is do all you can while you can.)

I have been making and testing some really tasty salad dressings.  I made a good one with blue cheese, lots of blue cheese because usually, the blue cheese is sparse in the ready-made dressings.

From an old August post:

I had a former student who grew up to become an HER realtor. She kindly sent me the HER cookbooks each year and the recipes are just fabulous. Today, while I was looking for a recipe for peanut butter pie with streusel for a requester from Cook's Corner I ran into a recipe that I had requested on Cook's Corner many years ago. While I did not find the peanut butter pie recipe, I grabbed the cherry-pecan loaf recipe to try today! Someone told me about this but would not give me the recipe, so now I am about to try it. It uses buttermilk and maraschino cherries. If it is good, I will add the recipe to this entry.

CHERRY-PECAN LOAF: (I MADE IT AND IT IS GOOD!)
This is from the HER holiday cookbook from many, many years ago.
1/2 cup butter
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs (I use jumbo)
1 tsp. vanilla
2 cups all- purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup chopped pecans
1-10 ounce jar maraschino cherries drained and chopped (If I were doing it again, I would use more cherries.)
1 cup powdered sugar, sifted
1/4 tsp. vanilla
milk to drizzling consistency. Drizzle over cooled loaf.

In large mixing bowl cream together butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla until light and fluffy. In medium mixing bowl stir together flour, soda and salt. Alternately add dry ingredients and buttermilk to creamed mixture, beating just until blended after each addition. Fold in nuts and cherries. Pour batter into greased loaf pan and bake at 350 for 55 to 60 minutes depending on your oven. Let stand10 minutes before removing from pan. Cool and drizzle if you like.

Life goes on...luckily

I need not have worried about too many tomatoes this year.  They have finished already.  They were also very small.  I heard several people say how small the tomatoes were this season. This is the first year in the 34 years we have lived here that we did not have a big garden.  The containers were good, but we think, too, that it was the dryness of the last few weeks that did them in. (It could be too that we had more BLTs this year than any other year.  That's got to stop and this is nature's way of saying so.)

Life without Winston has stabilized.  I only cry once a day now when I see something that tugs at my heart.  He was such a joy.

On a happy note, we have booked our rooms at Claiborne Mansion in New Orleans for Thanksgiving. Cloe, who has been very quiet of late, came to when I wrote that we were thinking of coming down for the holiday. 

Our Italy tour and wedding plans have firmed up to the point of no return and life is moving along too fast but in the right direction.

It's seafood today at Many Branches.  I have a concoction that will please everyone except Mike.  He is not a fan. Mashed potatoes with salmon and shrimp.  The mash is the star of this dish with no recipe, as usual.

We are getting a bit of rain today.  The plants are saying thank you as they bid summer farewell.
Our good boy, Winston.

Winston

We thought we were way out of the woods after a coyote mauled Winston late last fall, but this week has been hard for the little dog.  He has been in Ohio State's vet hospital for three days and we just now picked him up with directions and a shopping bag full of supplies for a feeding tube and bags of pills.  It was way over our heads so we took him directly to Beechwold vet hospital and worked out a solution with them to have him come to them at 7:30 in the mornings to spend the day getting fed through a feeding tube every four hours (plus the pills and shots), then we pick him up at 6:00 in the evening to spend the night at home where he feels so safe. It is amazing the trouble these vet doctors go to to make our animals whole again.  I don't have much in the way of encouragement for Winston, however.  He's sad and frightened and I am too.

I found an exciting, easy, delicious looking recipe to try but I am too sad to make it right now.  I will save it when there is better news.

Crispy hash brown's base in an iron skillet