SkyWatch Friday #10

Posted on September 12, 2008 by Donalyn

Go check out Skywatch Friday and see photos of the sky from photographers all over the world.

I got an email from Nikon yesterday and they are not charging me anything to fix my camera! I will have it back in 7 to 10 days. Cool huh?

The other night I came out on the porch and Larry said -“You should just keep your eyes shut during cocktail hour tonight.” I didn’t though – I went in and grabbed my trusty Nikon Coolpix5600. I am not even going to think about how this would have looked if it were taken with the good camera – just gonna enjoy how it came out with the old standby. Happy SkyWatch Friday!

Posted in skywatch friday | 27 Comments

Peace and Quiet

Posted on September 11, 2008 by Donalyn

9/11 is not a day for humor really. I though you might enjoy some photos that would be restful. I took these during a hike Larry and I made in the state land forest at the top of our valley earlier this summer.

This road runs along the spot were we used to go camping and also where we got married.This line of trees runs along what was once – about 100 years ago – a lane that led to a farm house.One of the trees in what would have been the yard of that farmhouse.Larry actually took this one – the remnants of a stone wall. It might have just been a retaining wall or possibly the foundation of a barn. Still in amazing shape.The forest up there is dotted with reminders that it was once something very different – a fairly settled and populated community of farms. I can’t help wonder about the people who made their lives there, but bits of stone walls are all that remain.

Posted in photos | 19 Comments

Wednesday without pity

Posted on September 10, 2008 by Donalyn

I was sure that I would have heard from Nikon by now. Because, when the Postal Service delivered my precious camera to them, I was certain that it would somehow stand out so that the people who evaluate broken cameras would be inexorably drawn to mine and grab it from wherever it was in the bin and look at it before any of those others. It seems that so far they have been able to resist this temptation. This leaves me with no choice but to cheer myself up with some of the – and I am not kidding here – approximately 23,000 unprocessed photos presently on my hard drive that I have taken since getting my D70.

Yellow makes me really really happy. My favorite “Bountiful Valley” daylily makes me happy.Doesn’t Queen Anne’s Lace make you happy? It’s a weed, but I usually don’t have the heart to pull them up because they are just so pretty.This begonia made me happy all last winter inside the house and all summer long on the porch. I think I will bring it inside tonight because I don’t trust that it won’t get too cold when it gets down to 40 degrees tonight.The photos I took of this “Erin Farmer” daylily bloom are some of my favorites from the whole summer. I may have even put one of them on the blog already, but here she is again.Finally, this was the last bloom of this particular Gloriosa Daisy. I planted a couple different varieties of these rudbeckias in this general area 7 years ago. They bloomed for two years and then nothing for 3 years – not a trace of them anywhere. Then last summer there were all over the place and again this year – one of my favorite garden surprises ever. Now don’t you feel a whole lot better?

Posted in garden, photos, Wordless Wednesday | Tagged | 20 Comments

Chocolate Fudge Zucchini Brownies

Posted on September 9, 2008 by Donalyn

It has come down to this. What can a person with a ton of zucchini do with all of it? You can only sneak the excess into so many back seats before people quit stopping over. You can’t leave it on the neighbors back porch without running into them sneaking gourds of their own over to your front porch. You can fry it, sauté it, grill it, freeze it, fricassee it, turn it into risotto, alfredo, marinara, soup, fritters, casseroles, gratins, stew and bread. But sooner or later, you run out of ways to cook it.

Until one Saturday morning the idea of ….. brownies pops into your mind. Brownies? Well, why not? Vegetables and chocolate are a winning combination aren’t they? I decided to find out.

I already have a really good brownie recipe. It’s the same recipe my Mom always made, though I have tweaked it a bit. I adapted it a bit more to include a certain prolific denizen of the garden. The first thing I did was to grate a largish zucchini and place it in a colander over a bowl. After an hour, I thoroughly squeezed as much moisture as I could from the squash. I also decided to try using brown sugar instead of white in an effort to keep the texture more fudgey than cake-like. ingredGrease a 9×12 inch baking dish and set the oven to 350 degrees.

In a heavy 3 quart sauce pan, melt:
2 sticks butter
Turn off heat and stir in
2 cups brown sugar
1/2 cup baking cocoa
Let that cool for about 5 minutes and beat in, one at a time:
3 eggs
Then, add
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups of the squeezed dry zucchini
1 cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup toasted walnuts, roughly chopped
And mix, just until combined
ingred_panPour into greased baking dish and place in preheated oven. Bake approximately 40 minutes, until the brownies test done with a toothpick.batter_panThen get ready to amaze your mouth, ’cause these are GOOD! They’re gooey and chewy and the squash gives them a fantastic texture a bit like coconut. And packed with nutrition! Ok – they are probably not packed with nutrition because really zucchini doesn’t have a whole lot of nutrition to begin with and we got rid of some of it when we squeezed out all the liquid. They are awfully yummy though.final_rec

Posted in recipes | 22 Comments

Look what I got!

Posted on September 8, 2008 by Donalyn

Last month, on her Birthday, Cathy at Noble Pig decided to give stuff away to other people. I was fortunate to win this – The Bread Bible:

I know the drawing was random, but this could not be a better fit for me. I love baking bread. For years when the girls were little and I was home with them, I baked all of our bread. We were all hippie-dippy, back to the land in those days and baking bread to me was elemental and basic to caring for my family. I barely even used recipes, just making sure the proportions were correct and throwing any old thing into the batters. I even kept a sourdough starter alive for nearly a year.

These days I am working on improving my cooking techniques so this book is going to be so much fun for me. And you know I will share my results here with you guys.

Thanks again Cathy – and I hope your Birthday was really happy, cause you certainly made my day!

Posted in Uncategorized | 12 Comments