Tuesday, December 1, 2009

December Flowers



This morning, my husband came in with a nice, but amazing surprise - a bouquet of fresh picked flowers! Now, normally, he picks a really beautiful bouquet, and you might look at this one as a little scraggly, but to me, ANY fresh flowers in the Shenandoah Valley on December 1st are amazing and welcome. They really highlight the peculiar weather we have experienced here in the past few years - this year was especially odd.

The temperatures stayed warm during the day, with some rain occassionally and the dropped down to frost, sometimes even hard frost at night. In the morning the sun comes up and we're back up to 68 or 70 degrees. The grass is still growing, the goats are still browsing and, as you can see, flowers are blooing! We saw somwone actually mowing his lawn this afternoon! It is really more like springtime in the valley!  Being a moderate weather type of person (not too hot, not too cold), I am really enjoying it. I have been able to do a lot of catching up on my pitifully neglected garden clean up!

We took so many pictures during the Thanksgiving holiday that I would not have the space to run even a few here. But here is one I loved and wanted to share...

                                       

This is the grand-daughter you hear about all the time, our little Sarah. We made Thanksgiving pies together, and in the process, it occurred to her that the cupboard door handles would be great eyes for a "smiley face". She did this and I raced for the camera! She'd been trying out a new cranberry-raisin pie filling, and was in a very creative mood!

We are STILL doing venison! We cooked and processed about 15 lbs of venison barbeque last night. We ran out of some of the ingredients for our usual barbeque sauce, so we created a new, and very tasy recipe...

Venison BB Sauce -

2 bottles of your favorite BB sauce
1 qt tomato sauce
1/4 red wine vinegar

Mix together and then pour over cooked, shredded venison (or pork). Mix with your hands and then let cook on very low overnight in a large roaster/cooker. This was enough for 15 lbs of meat.

So good! Adjust the vinegar to taste and maybe add some salt and pepper. Enjoy!





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