40 x 40 - 29. Master a Homemade Salsa Recipe

In previous blogs you have learned about my new hobby of canning.  I am enjoying trying new recipes, processes, and ingredients.  I love feeding my family food that I know exactly where it comes from and how it was processed.  I am proud to give my canned food as gifts.  It's definitely something that I plan to keep experimenting with.

I decided that I wanted to make a great salsa recipe and I knew exactly where I wanted to start:



You cannot get great produce like you can at the local market, grown by the local farmers.  No offense to the grocery stores around here, but I have yet to find a tomato that actually tastes like a tomato should on any shelf in this town.



Again, buying local produce also means that I know where the food comes from and what was done to it during the growing process.

The next step is the longest.  Prepping all of the ingredients.  I chopped three different colors of bell peppers.



The dogs held down the front porch.



I chopped five cups of jalapenos.



My husband and the cat held down the couch.



I chopped eight cups of onions. (My least favorite part of the process!)



Add that all to a pot with 16 cups of fresh diced tomatoes.



Toss in some garlic, salt, sugar, vinegar, and cilantro. 



Now we're ready to start cooking. 



 I love watching the process of how the ingredients meld together.



After about 45 minutes the salsa was ready to can.  Using the jars that had been sterilizing while the salsa was cooking.



This is my favorite picture from the whole canning process.  What it says to me is "you have worked hard to make good food for your family.  Take a break while I finish the process."



One last step, the waiting.  Waiting to hear that glorious "popping" sound of the jars cooling down and sealing.  No matter where I am in the house, or how faint the sound, I count in my head how many pops I hear.  I tend to hold my breath until the last one seals.



And now we are set for a winter of homemade salsa.

40 x 40 - 26. Ride the Train to See My Family

Before I tell you about riding the train, I feel like I need to set the scene:

In the summer of 2012, I went to Salem to spend a few days with my best friend Dawn and her family.  We had a great time visiting and spending time together.  We took her boys up to Portland to a warehouse that is nothing but trampolines.  We jumped for an hour and I don't think I have ever been so sore afterwards.

The next day Dawn and I went to the Portland Saturday Market.  We browsed around and found some treasures.  On our way back from Portland, about 10 miles from the exit for Dawn's house, I looked down and noticed that every light on my dashboard was on.  I made the split-second decision to not say anything to Dawn.  No reason to panic both of us.  I figured at this point that we were still moving forward, getting closer to her exit.  My car was still running, and as long it didn't start smoking, we would just keep going.

I started inching over from the fast lane, to the middle lane, to the outside lane.  Dawn was continuing to tell me some funny story about her boys, completely oblivious to my racing heart.  Finally we reached her exit.  Once I slowed down my car, I realized that my car no longer had power.  I could not accelerate anymore.  I calmly said to Dawn "don't panic, but I think my car is dying."  I have to give her credit that she didn't panic too much.  Luckily we had made it off Interstate 5 and were on the Parkway (which is still a busy road, but nothing like I-5).

We made a few calls, one to the local Hyundai dealership service department and one to Dawn's husband. It was 3:30pm on a Saturday and the dealership closed at 4:00pm.  They would not open again until Monday morning.  I called AAA and was lucky enough to get a fast tow to the dealership, just minutes before they left.





Meanwhile, Dawn's husband came from home a few blocks away and picked up Dawn.  She took him back home and then met me at the dealership.  Feeling bad for me, Grant decided to come along and treat me to a cupcake at his favorite place downtown.



So now I am stuck in Salem with a car that won't be ready for a week to 10 days depending on what they find when the service department opens in two days.  This was also about the time we were going to Gold Beach to go fishing for a few days so it seemed like a waste to rent a car to get home and then get back up to Salem in two weeks.  After talking with Scott, we decided that he would drive up on Sunday and pick me up.  We are housing one of our boys spare vehicles at our house so once we got back home I had something to drive. 

So I made it back home, leaving my car in Salem for a diagnoses.  This is one of the times in the story where I tell you how blessed I was that my car broke down when it did.  It could not have happened in a better place.  There is no dealership in our town; the nearest one being 77 miles away.  Had my car broke down at home, we would have had to had it towed all the way to the dealership.  That would have been a little expensive.  I was blessed to have Dawn with me, and to have her husband so close that he was able to come help us.  I was blessed that we made it off the Interstate before we had to pull over.  I was blessed that my husband had the next day off and could come and get me, never complaining once about driving 9 hours roundtrip in one day.  I was blessed that we had a spare vehicle to get us around for two weeks.  And I was especially blessed that my car was just under 100,000 and still under warranty.

Flash forward two weeks and a new alternator later.  How to get back to Salem to get my car?  Our town is right on the mainline of the Amtrak train.  Fortunately, so is my hometown. We researched taking the train north as an option.  The final cost of a one-way ticket, with our AAA discount, was $44.  That's well below a tank of gas to have someone drive up in a second car.  This wasn't exactly what I had in mind when I said I wanted to ride the train to see my family, but I guess when the opportunity arises, you take it.

When my car was fixed my brother-in-law and my nephew ran up to Salem to pick it up.  (Again, count your blessings!)  They were not going to be in town the weekend I was planning to go pick it up, so they dropped it off at the train station in Albany.  Scott had to work so he took me to the train station on his way to work.



Seven hours later I got off the train in Albany, got in my newly repaired car, and drove the four hours home.

Ok, so I know this is a stretch to say I rode the train to see my family.  But we are getting close the deadline for this list, and the stretch is going to have to do.

Riding the train was fun.  It would have been nice to have a partner, but I got lucky and got a nice kid to sit next to.  I plan to do this trip again, for fun next time.  Maybe in the winter when the view from the train will be completely different than in the summer.

40 x 40 - 8. Have a Monthly Date Night with My Husband (Part 4)

We have made it to the final three date nights.  June, July, and August.  Planning a year of dates was a lot of fun.  It definitely encouraged us to do things that we have always talked about doing, but just never followed through on.  June's date night was a prime example of this.

The Cowboy Dinner Tree is one of those places that is legendary around these parts.  It's hard to believe that way out in the middle of nowhere is a restaurant that is famous for large servings of steak and chicken.  We have always talked about going to see this place for ourselves.

 

Simple directions to the Cowboy Dinner Tree:  Head about 50 miles direct north of town until you see this sign:

 



 

Drive past the large herd of pet buffalo:

 

Keep going until you see this sign at an intersection just before you actually enter the town of Silver Lake. And by town, I mean gas station, tractor parts store, and cemetery. Don't be alarmed that it appears to be a road that leads to nowhere.

And just when you are convinced that this can't possibly be right, you come around a corner and find an oasis of cars and old-timey yard decorations.  That's when you know you have officially arrived.



The menu is fairly limited, steak or chicken.  When you call to make reservations (which is highly recommended) you place your order.  Scott made the wise decision to get one steak and one chicken.  The steak is more like a roast and the chicken is literally an entire chicken! 

You are immediately seated and served lemonade, salads, and rolls.  Before you can finish your salad,  she brings a large bowl of soup for you to share.  I am not sure if you noticed in the picture, but the concept here is that no one goes home hungry.  Everything is served in large quantity.



And whatever is leftover is happily bagged up for you to take home for the next day. 



The Cowboy Dinner Tree was definitely worth the drive, and possibly someplace we would take guests to.  It might become an annual event for us.

So now I have some bad news.  But first let me preface it by saying that planning 11 months in advance did not allow me to take into consideration changes in our plans.  For the month of July we were supposed to go on a canoe ride and have dinner up a local lake.  We had every intention of doing this, it's just that life happened and the canoe trip did not.  Between hosting a baseball player for a local summer league team and traveling Scott's niece's wedding and our summer vacation, we did not have a free day to squeeze this in.  But rest assured we had several other date nights in the month of July.

August was our 12th and final planned date night.  This was the one that I was most excited about!



Summer in our town gets very warm.  Not willing to spring for air conditioning, there are many nights in the month of August where it is almost unbearable to be inside our house.  Since it was August when I was originally planning these, this one came easily.



Using a white sheet from our spare bedroom, and some strategically placed binder clips to prevent holes, Scott hung a "screen" on the backside of our house.



With Daisy supervising, he ran the laptop, projector, and speakers out to the middle of the yard.



And then everyone waited patiently for it to get dark.

This night really lived up to my expectations!  It was such a beautiful night; warm enough that blankets were hardly needed.  We picked the perfect movie to watch under the stars.  I would absolutely do this one again, only next time I would invite some friends over for a movie party.

Well there you have it, a year of date nights.  I hope that you enjoyed these as much as we did, and are maybe inspired to try some new things.

40 x 40 - 8. Have a Monthly Date Night with My Husband (Part 2)

Welcome to part 2 of our year of Monthly Date Nights.  We left off with the month of December. 

The holidays are always crazy busy around our house.  Like everyone else, we have packages to mail all over the United States.  We travel a couple of hundred miles to get to spend some time with family. We celebrate my birthday.  We catch the Albany Ballet Nutcracker Ballet.  We usually end up having at least two Christmas dinners in order to get to celebrate with everyone.  Like I said, it's a very busy month.

We still managed to find time to squeeze in a date night.  For the past couple years we have enjoyed the local community holiday production. This year's production was the ever enjoyable Miracle on 34th Street.  (No, we did not see the John Denver Holiday Tribute.)



Did I mention how busy the month of December is?  We had tickets to the Friday night show, which also happened to be my birthday.  I also had tickets to the Sunday matinee with the girls from my bookclub.  And the Saturday in between, I would be driving up to Albany to catch my niece's ballet performance. 

We got to our seats and read through the program.  In small letters at the bottom of the last page, it said the performance was 3 hours long (not including the 15 minute intermission).  By the time we reached intermission, we were both so tired that we decided to call it a night.  I felt bad that Scott was not going to get to see the second half.  And, although I think he was secretly thankful we left, he has never let me forget that he only got to see the first half.  I did end up going on Sunday, and eventually saw the second half.

January's date night was another night out.



This time, Scott got to pick dinner and a movie.  All his choice.  I should tell you that we do not go to the movies.  Seriously in the 12 years that we have been together, I can count on one hand how many movies we have seen in the theater together.  And yes, all of those movies have been my choice.  I am pretty lucky that my husband will go along with me and my friends to sit in a room full of teenage girls and watch Twilight.  But this date night was all about him.  So of course he chose the one movie that I would never choose.  A shoot'em up, good cop, bad mayor movie.  I honestly could not tell you what the plot of this movie was as I simply sat there and watch Mark Wahlberg for two hours.  Mmm Hmm!  Not such a bad choice in the end.



Oh, and dinner.  We enjoyed a great meal at our local Applebee's.



February was another busy month.  The whole month got away from us before we were able to actually complete the date night.  So, if we are being honest, we actually did this one a few days late, on the first weekend of March.  (Don't worry, there is still a March Date Night!)



This was intended to be a Fondue dinner party with a few guests, but ended up just being the two of us.  Scott chose a beer cheese fondue recipe.  Two of his favorite food groups.  Beer and cheese.









This was fun, but definitely something that made more sense with a group. 

The winter months were harder to plan because of the holidays and not knowing what the weather was going to be like.  I promise you that the next few months will get a little more interesting.

40 x 40 - 8. Have a Monthly Date Night with My Husband (Part 1)

Before we begin the series of posts about our one year of monthly date nights, Daisy and Mack would like to wish you all a happy Fall.

We decorated our porch today for Fall today.  Everyone got in the spirit.  We even got Mack to keep still for 30 seconds so we could take a picture.  Daisy on the other hand would sit all day and let you take her picture.  She's kind of a ham when the camera comes out.

She also a big lover, believe it or not.

Ok so moving on (or moving back I guess).  This is the first of four posts regarding our monthly date nights over the past year.  It all officially started on our 8th wedding anniversary, a year ago August.  For our anniversary, I gave Scott a basket with 12 sealed envelopes in it.  Each envelope was labeled with a different month and contained a planned date night for that month.  He was not allowed to open the envelopes until the first day of that month.  Being that our anniversary is in August, the first envelope he had to open for was September.

September's date night was a Crater Lake Adventure.  I had called and made reservations to ride the boat on Crater Lake.  Neither of us had ever done this before, but it was always something we talked about.

There is only one way to access the boat, and that one way is to hike down to Cleetwood Cove.  The hike down is nothing.  It's knowing that every step you take down will be two steps back up that makes it a little rough.

I think this little guy wanted to go with us on the boat.

Crater Lake is one of the most beautiful places in America.  The water is so clear.  It's also very cold.  Of the people who visit Crater Lake every year, only a fraction actually make the hike down to the water.  We had to take this opportunity to actually get our feet wet.

The weather was absolutely beautiful!  As you go around the lake in the boat, the park ranger points out things you should look at; things you can only see from this angle.  

But you know it's going to be good when the park ranger literally throws down the microphone and scrambles to get his camera out.  Towards the end of our boat ride we saw a large dust cloud along the shoreline.  This dust cloud kept getting bigger and bigger.  Then it hit us all that we were witnessing a large landslide.  The park ranger got so excited and said that in all the years he has been giving the tour he has never seen a landslide that big.  This picture really doesn't do it justice.

When I made the boat reservations I also made reservations for dinner at the lodge.  Again, something we had always talked about but never did.  The problem was that the only time they had was 5:10pm.  The boat didn't dock at the bottom of Cleetwood Cove until 4:30pm.  We not only had a 20 minute drive back to the lodge, but we had to still get up the 700 feet accent back to the parking lot.  The equivalent of 70 flights of stairs can take an average of an hour.  We had to do this in 20 minutes if we planned to make our reservations. 

We made it back up the trail in record time and headed towards the lodge.  There is no cell reception at Crater Lake so we couldn't call the lodge and let them know we were still coming.  We decided that Scott would drop me off and then go park the truck.  I went running into the lodge (10 minutes late) walking straight up to the seating hostess.  I told her we had a reservation and apologized for being late.  She said not to worry she knew we were going to be late because my husband called about 15 minutes ago to let them know.  I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about, but at that point I decided to just go with it.  We never did figure out what she was talking about, but someone was looking out for us and we got to enjoy a wonderful meal.  If you ever get the chance to have dinner at Crater Lake Lodge, take it!

For October date night, we visited a local pumpkin patch to select the perfect Halloween pumpkins.  It was a beautiful fall sunday.  There were a few other families at the pumpkin patch.

At this particular pumpkin patch you had to actually cut the pumpkins off the vine yourself.  You really felt like once you cut the pumpkin, you were obligated to keep it.  But as sure as you would find the perfect pumpkin, cut it, and start to walk back to the wheelbarrow you would see the most perfect pumpkin just out of the corner of your eye.  You also had to have that one.

That is how you end up with a wheelbarrow full of "perfect" pumpkins.

We then took our pumpkins home to carve.  I don't think that Scott and I have ever carved pumpkins together before.  I am a very non-creative carver, where as Scott is very detailed in his carving.

You can probably guess which simple pumpkin is mine and which detailed pumpkin is Scott's.  And in case you were wondering, no we still did not get one trick-or-treater again this year even with these fantastic pumpkins decorating our front porch!

November's date night was a nice quiet night at home putting together a puzzle.  We picked a puzzle, got our puzzle table out, found a good movie on the television, popped some popcorn, and got started.  Like most people, we put the outside of the puzzle together first.  We quickly realized that the puzzle was too big to fit on our puzzle table.  That was the end of putting the puzzle together.  I don't think Scott was real excited about this one anyway.

So there you have the first three months of date night.  Check back to see what adventures we had in December, January, and February.