Making your own brown sugar and joyful noise came to visit.

 This morning as we were prepping for a visit from The Cousins, Chance made Brown Sugar.Last week I had found a posting somewhere that I have lost, I found the how to and the why make it yourself,Chance just beat me to the doing of it.It really is so simple that I am not to sure I will bother buying bagged brown sugar anymore unless I am doing some sort of maga baking project.
  The reasoning behind making your own as I read it on the forgotten website is it is actually cheaper.Which is a good enough reason to make it but not my true reason for making it.At one of our local co-op markets they sell my favorite brown sugar which is as dark as black strap molasses but it is spend-y and rare treat.So now I can try to recreate that brown sugar and have it all the time.

Chance's Brown Sugar

  All you have to do to make your own brown sugar is take some white sugar (how ever much you think you will be wanting) put it in a bowl (Chance used our Kitchen Aid mixer to do this part) and start stirring in some molasses until you have the color and flavor you want it to be.Since you have now altered the moisture in the sugar you will need to store it in an air tight container. Chance did not measure any of this he just kept adding the molasses until he got the color he wanted.Next time I am going to try and add more of the molasses to see how close to the co-op's I can get.
  Maybe not everyone keeps molasses in their cupboards like we do so if you are making this for the first time and have to buy molasses this won't seem like a money saver.But I bake with it often so already have the molasses on hand so it seems kind of like a freebie to me.

A band of cousins,let the wild rumpus begin!

 Today my Cousin and his three kids came for lunch and a visit.As you can see from the photos after lunch the kids pulled out most of the musical instruments and had their own jam session,it was a rumpus in some ways but mostly a very joyful noise. And can you believe your eyes? Do you see that rare thing in the back ground? It's called a girl child! Oh my we need those around more often what a great change of energy.

Miss Z playing the didgeridoo.

Wild Mushroom Pirogi

 We had a pot luck lunch of Lasagna, Swiss Chard and Chick Pea wilted Salad and Wild Mushroom Pirogi.The menu was an attempt to feed all tastes. The Wild Mushroom Pirogi was my attempt to keep reminding Cousin and us that we are going mushroom picking soon,it's written in stone now.I tried to be a little creative with the dough scraps,those are suppose to be mushrooms on the top.

Hrafinstaads soon to be rain barrels.

 Shortly after the Cousins left our neighbor stopped by he had something for us if we could drive across the neighborhood to get them,two wine barrels for free. We had asked the neighbor a while ago about his wine barrels he turned into rain barrels,he said he would let us know if he could get some more.Well these two were suppose to be for his parents who decided they did not want them after all.The barrels were going to be just put out to the curb for free but then they remembered us and so now they are here.One of them will live in the flower bed along our front walk way near our front door.I think it's going to look nice.First we will need to find plugs for their bung holes and Chance will build a platform for them to sit on.I am still not too sure it make sense in wet Oregon to keep the rain barrels but the idea behind them is a good one so we shall see if they are worth it or not.
Other than all of that life is good.Yeah sure our garden sucks this year but I don't feel so bad about that anymore.After talking with several friends around town who are either professional gardeners or have gone through the Master Gardener program I now know that even our "better educated" gardening and homesteading friends are having a bad garden year.Whats the saying? Misery loves company?

Rois