A Little Time Away

This past week, I got the pleasure of accompanying my husband to Branson, MO to watch him compete in the Bassmaster Central Open that took place on Table Rock Lake.  It was a week full of relaxing, fishing, reading, cooking, and knitting.  Exactly what I needed.  We got down there the previous Friday night and after a long days drive we decided to hit the hay early.  Special thanks goes out to the fraternity that seemed to have booked the entire hotel and party until the sun came up.  It was a spectacular nights rest!  We awoke to a very foggy and chilly morning but we were excited to see what Table Rock had in store for us.

If you've never been to this area of the country, I would highly recommend it.  It's very beautiful.

When I say that, I am excluding the city of Branson and referring to the surrounding areas.  In my opinion, Branson is a small window into what hell must be like, but I digress.  We got on the water that morning and Josh immediately had me throwing the Alabama Rig.

This was fun for me because they're not legal up here in Minne and they have the capability of catching more than one fish at a time.  Which is an awesome because I have dubbed myself "The One Fish Wonder".  Wouldn't ya know it, I actually caught two at a time!!  I think we might be onto something.

Catching those two filled my personal limit, so I decided to spend the rest of my time snapping pictures and reading this months book club pick of My Horizontal Life by the hi-larious Chelsea Handler.  That book is a must read and it will have you laughing out loud for the majority of it.  I was frequently reading snippets to Josh while he was busy fishing and had him cracking up too.  He's so lucky to have me on the boat with him to keep him company.

After we got off the water for the day we went to check in to the resort that we would be staying at for the remainder of the week and meet up with our new roomie Brent Homan.  We had dinner at the Altenhof Inn where I had the best sauerkraut and bratwurst pizza ever!  Granted, I've never had this combo before but it was an amazing pie!   All of us were pretty pooped from our day so after a little grocery shopping we decided to call it a day.

The next morning, Josh woke up at the ungodly hour of 5am to get out on the water.  We decided it would be best if I slept in.  Good choice.  I got to catch up on some much needed zzz's and then get the lay of the land.  Whilst doing this I snapped a couple of pics that caught my eye.

 

I have a serious love of peonies

Josh picked me up around 11 and we headed back out on the water.  It was a chilly and windy day!  I didn't take off any of my five layers that I was rocking.  But I did catch another fish!!

Shortly after this pic was taken, we realized we were being followed by this guy.   The pic doesn't do him justice as he was at least 3 feet long.

Neither of us were comfortable with the situation that had just formed so we hi-tailed it out of there and moved to a new spot.  It was at this point after my one fish limit had been caught that I took to reading my book again and snapping more pics.

 I got this one right as the herring was about to take flight.

Once Monday hit, I wasn't allowed to be on the water with Josh anymore (Bassmaster rules, not ours) so I was on my own with SW Missouri as my oyster.  A couple of times, I drove into neighboring Kimberling City and Branson West to visit some of the local antique shops and thrift stores.  I also stumbled upon the KC Bakery & Bistro where I had an apple cinnamon old world sweet roll.  I really should have taken a picture of this goodness, but I'm an idiot and didn't.  It looked quite similar to this though.

 

Talk about deeeelish, my friends!  That landed itself on the list of things I need to learn to make pronto.
 
On Tuesday, my husband had me driving up to the Bass Pro Shops in Springfield to stock up on some lures that he was going to need for the tournament.  Holy moly that place is huge!  I actually found myself really enjoying it there.  Lots of fun stuff to look at.  Also, since I happened to be in Springfield for the day, I went to Battlefield Mall and checked out Body Central.  This was a special treat for me because I buy clothes off of their website but never had the chance to visit the store.  The closest one to me about 400 miles away so I was pumped!  In the end, it was probably a bad idea that I went because I ended up walking out with half the store.  Whoops.

When I wasn't out and about exploring , I was sitting on the balcony working on my latest knitting projects. 

The view from the balcony

Our friends Ryan and Deanna recently had they're first baby and I've been making them the adorable Turtlebutt.  I try to make these for all my friends that have babies because they are so stinkin' cute.  I wasn't able to get it completed during this trip but I got pretty darn close.

However, I did finish a pair of socks I had been working on for Josh.

Tournament day was on Thursday and Friday and it was quite the event!

 I try to go to as many of Josh's tournaments as possible, but none have been on the level of this one.  Although they haven't had the prizes that this one offered either.  First place is $5,000, a new boat, an automatic berth into the 2013 Bassmaster Classic and potential to fish in the 2013 Elite Series.  Pretty much everything that my hubby has been working his butt of for all these years.  After the first day's weigh in, he had a total weight of 11lb 13 oz. which left him tied for 51st.

His day two total was 9 lb 3 oz where he finished in 81st place out of 166 boats.

I'm not going to lie and say it wasn't disappointing because it was.  I see how hard he works and everything that he puts in to these tournaments and it makes me sad when he doesn't do well.  However, whether he finishes in first or last place I am beyond proud of him.  It takes some big kahunas to fish at this level and I know one day he will make his and our dreams come true.  If you want to know the how's and what's of his tournament strategy, you can visit his blog here.

We had a great time in Branson, however, once the tournament was over I was more than ready to go home and see my pups.  I was dying for some sloppy kisses and my own bed.  I even had an extra day off which I used to go to the farmers market to pick up some fruit for another round of jam.  More on that next week!

Let's Talk About Blocking

Up until about 5 months ago, I had never blocked anything in my life.  I didn't really have a reason to.  The bulk of my knitting had consisted of scarfs, mittens, socks, hats and cowls.  Many may disagree with me, but I don't consider these items to be "block worthy".   If you're making garments such as sweaters, vests or anything that's going to require seaming then that's a different deal.  It wasn't until the holidays when I was making sweaters for the moms that I had a reason to do it.  Since I'm always trying to do things on a budget, I didn't purchase a blocking board.  I had heard somewhere that if you have a mattress or ironing board, than that will work just fine.  Lucky for me that I have a king size mattress that is not in use in our spare bedroom.   This has been the perfect platform for the 3 sweaters I have recently made. 

Blocking isn't too difficult, however, done incorrectly it can be the death of your garment.  Last week, I finally got around to blocking the beautiful Aidez.  To start, I took a 16 gallon storage bin and filled it with cool water and a packet of Soak.

Then I put the 5 pieces of my sweater in the bin, submersed them fully in the water and walked away for 15 minutes. 

This would be a great time to vacuum your house or fold that laundry that has been sitting around for days.  The great thing about Soak is that there is no need to rinse, so after it has sat for the full 15 minutes, very gently remove each piece and squeeze the excess water out of it.  DO NOT WRING!!  This is one of the critical points where if you're not careful, you can stretch the garment so it's big enough to fit a sumo wrestler.   Next, take the most absorbent towels you own and lay them down on your freshly vacuumed floor.  Make sure that the towels have absolutely no chance of transferring it's colors to the garment you're blocking.  I would hate to see you make it this far and have something like color bleeding mess things up. 

Lay the pieces next to each other but not overlapping on the towel and start rolling it up like an enchilada.

Step on the towel a bit so you get out any excess moisture. 

From here you want to move the party over to your blocking board, aka "mattress".  I laid down another large towel so the sweater wouldn't be lying directly on the mattress.  Once you have all the pieces laid out, take some t-pins and carefully pin them to the edges.

You only want to in them to where they naturally lay.  You don't want to stretch the garment at all during this.  Place a pin every couple of inches and on each corner.  After this is done, walk away for the next 24 hours or as long as it takes for everything to dry completely.  For me, once everything is dry and it doesn't look like I've stretched the bejesus out of it then I'll give myself a pat on the back and a large glass of wine!  Sometimes I'll even jump up and down and do a happy dance.  Now comes the best part.  Seaming.  Try not to stab someone in frustration during this part and you'll be golden.  Wanna see how it turned out??

So dang proud of this one.

Homemade Chicken Cordon Bleu

If you're like me, you had a ton of leftover ham after the Easter holiday.  I'm not the biggest fan of ham sandwiches so I needed to figure out what to do with all of it.  I was searching through my fridge and found some chicken breasts, and swiss cheese.  Chicken Cordon Bleu's anyone?  I absolutely love the frozen ones you buy at the store, but I've never made them myself.  It can't be that hard, can it?  Turns out it was pretty easy peasy.

All you need is chicken breasts, ham, swiss cheese, panko crumbs, flour and eggs. 

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees. First, with the flat side of a mallet, I pounded out the chicken breasts until they were about a 1/2" thick.

Then, I added 3 slices of swiss cheese. I would have gone with 2, but these were the super thin slices and I love me some cheese. Next, I added the ham. I would have added some salt and pepper for some seasoning, but the panko that I had was already pre-seasoned.

Tightly roll the chicken into, well, a roll. If you have some toothpicks on hand, you'd want to insert them at this point. I didn't and it still worked fine.

Lay out3 separate shallow dishes. In the first one put 2-3 tablespoons of flour, in the second dish, crack two eggs and lightly beat. In the third, pour in the panko crumbs.

Now, take your chicken and go down the line. Lightly coat in the flour, then get a good coating of the egg wash and finally roll that sucker around in the panko until you can't see your chicken anymore.

Place onto a cookie sheet that has been lined with foil and lightly sprayed. Repeat with the other chicken. Bake in the oven for about 25-35 minutes depending on the size of the bird you started with.

These turned out really delicious and they only took about 10 minutes to prepare.  I paired mine with a baked potato and a glass of Cabernet.  Upon further thought, it would be really easy to take one hour of your day and knock a bunch of these out to keep in your freezer for a later meal.  I may have to do that soon.

Chicken Cordon Bleu
Serves 2


2 chicken breasts
2-3 slices swiss cheese
4-5 slices ham
3 Tbls flour
2 eggs - beaten
1 cup seasoned panko crumbs

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Line a cookie sheet with foil and lightly coat with cooking spray.  Between 2 pieces of saran wrap, pound the chicken breasts to 1/2" thickness.  Remove top layer of saran wrap to add the cheese slices and ham.  Wrap these 3 ingredients tightly in a roll.  In 3 separate shallow containers add the flour, eggs and panko crumbs.  Coat the first roll with flour, than move to the egg wash until coated completely.  Next, dip it into the panko crumbs until generously covered.  You don't want to see the chicken anymore.  Place on the cookie sheet and repeat with the other chicken breast.  Bake for 20-30 minutes depending on the size of the chicken until it is no longer pink in the middle.

I Be Jammin'!

Have you ever put something off for a really long time because you were so intimidated by it?  Up until this weekend that was me with canning.  I really don't know why I waited so long.  It was so simple!  A few years ago, I had tried it under the strict supervision of my friend Molly and her father, but going at it alone was a scary thought!  I'm not going to lie, I did a TON of research before I even started.  There are so many factors that could go wrong, with things not sealing properly, or you don't get the correct amount of acid so you're food will spoil before you eat it.  With all the research I did, I felt more than confident going into my first solo canning experience.  I picked an easy Strawberry Jam recipe that I saw The Pioneer Woman make on her show a few weeks back.  The ingredients were simple.  Strawberries, sugar, pectin and lemon juice. The recipe called for 5 cups mashed strawberries.  So, how do you figure out how many pounds that is?  A quick Google search of "mashed strawberries to cups" and I had my answer.  There is about 1.75 cups per pound, so I needed about 3 lbs of berries.  Gotta love Google.

First, you start by putting your jars in the canning water and bringing it to a simmer. 

In a small sauce pan, do the same with the lids and bands. The jars will become sterilized when you do the water bath at the end, but you want to get your jars hot so when you put in your boiling jam, your jars won't break. As far as the lids go, you want the rubber to get softened up so it will seal properly.

Next, hull and mash the strawberries.  I did this about a pound at a time in a large bowl with a  potato masher measuring along the way. 

Place the berries that you've measured in a large pot and add the pectin and lemon juice.  A couple of things to note.  I bought the jar of powdered pectin, because it seems to be more cost effective than buying it one box at a time.  The cost of the jar was the same as 2 boxes of pectin and the jar holds about 2.5 boxes.  Not a huge cost eliminator, but every little bit helps.  Also, I read somewhere that buying the bottled lemon juice is better than buying actual lemons because that way you can control the acidity better.  I guess all lemons are not created equal.

I placed the berry mix on the stove over medium high heat and brought it up to a hard boil. 

Then, I added 7 cups of sugar, while stirring constantly. Keep stirring until all the sugar is dissolved and the berries form a "violent" boil. This part gets a little messy so maybe keep the kiddos away from the pot during all this. It was during the "violent" boil, that I added my secret ingredient of Grand Marnier. Only a couple of tablespoons are needed. Now its time to remove the jam from the heat and get to canning!

I formed an assembly line of sorts by first removing the jars from the water and placing them on a clean towel. Next to those, I put the pot with the lids and bands. Then I placed the jam so I could go down the line to fill the jars with ease.

I should probably stop and back up the train for a second to show you all the supplies that are needed for this. First, you need a large pot for your water bath and a canning rack. I got a kit with all the stuff in it for Christmas, so if you can find one of those then you'll be golden for all future canning endeavors. Otherwise you'll need a wide mouth funnel, jar lifters, a magnetic lid lifter, bubble remover, jar wrench and a good pair of tongs.

Place the funnel over one of the jars and using a ladle or measuring cup, carefully scoop your jam into the jars leaving at least 1/4" head space at the top.  Continue down the line and fill all remaining jars.  I only sterilized 9 jars for this and ended up having some extra so I found an extra jar to put the rest in and am now using that as my current refrigerator jar.

Using a clean, damp rag, wipe the rims and sides of the jars to remove any jam that may have gone rogue.  Next, take the nifty magnetic wand and carefully lift the lids from the pot and center them on the jars. 

Screw on the bands until you get resistance.  You don't want to make them tight at this point but rather tightened enough so that the lid won't come undone in the water bath.

Once all the lids and bands are on, place as many jars as you can in your canning rack.  I think I'm going to need a new rack because the one that came with my kit will only hold 5 half pint jars at a time so I had to do two batches.  If I wanted to to can pints or quarts, I'd be hosed.  Place the rack with the jars carefully into boiling water and place the lid on. Make sure you have at least 1-2 inches of water covering the jars.

The water should be at a rolling boil for the duration of the canning period which for this jam is 15 minutes.  After 15 minutes, turn the heat off and let them sit in the water for another 10 minutes.

Remove the canning rack from the pot and using your jar lifters, carefully move the jars from the rack to a clean, dry towel.  Repeat these steps with the remaining jars.  It wasn't long after I removed the jars from the canning rack that I started to hear the magical "ping" to know that the jars sealed properly.  I'm not sure there's a more satisfying sound in the world.  Now as tempting as it is to mess with the jars and putz with the tops to make sure they sealed, don't touch them for 24 hours! 

I read an interesting tip online that said when storing the jars you should not keep the bands screwed on.  That way, any gases that may still be released can escape without any issues.  When you're ready to use it or gift it to someone, than place the band back on.

How about a cost breakdown for this little canning adventure?  We all know I love those!

10 jars @ $.67 each = $6.70
3 lbs strawberries on sale for $1.88 each = $5.64
Jar of Pectin @ $5.00.  But I only used about $2.25 worth
2 lemons @ $.50 each = $1.00
Sugar bought on sale for $2.49

For a total of $18.08 I got 10 half pints of jam which breaks down to $1.81/jar.  Not too shabby and it tastes really good too!!  If you've been intimidated by canning, you shouldn't be.  It was so much easier than I ever thought it would be.  Happy canning!

Pin of the Week: Homemade Laundry Soap and Fabric Softener

I think I'm going to try out a new thing on The Fishermans Widow called the Pin of the Week.  I spend so much time on Pinterest and I really do end up making all different kinds of stuff that I find on there.  So I figure I can test stuff out and report back my findings.  My most recent experiment was with the homemade laundry soap and fabric softener recipes that have been floating around out there.  For the laundry soap I used a recipe provided by the blog Being Creative To Keep My Sanity.  Boy do I know the feeling!  Any-whoo, I stopped by my local Walmart hoping to find all the ingredients I needed and realized this recipe must be catching on because every ingredient I needed was sitting next to each other on the shelf in the laundry isle.  I picked up all the ingredients for about $18.50.  According to her blog this is supposed to last me for about 9 months so we'll see if this ends up being a bargain or not.  What's in this magical concoction you ask?   The ingredients are simple.

1 - 4 lb 12 oz box Borax
1 - 4 lb box Arm & Hammer Baking Soda
1 - 3 lb 7 oz box Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda

3 bars of Fels-Naptha soap - grated

2 small containers of Oxy Clean

I lined a 5 gallon container with a garbage bag and combined everything together.

Since I don't feel like digging into a big bucket every time I do a load, I've been using one of the Oxy containers and re-filling as needed.  Using the scooper provided with the Oxy, on average I've been using about 1 1/2 - 2 scoops per load.  I must say, this stuff seems to actually work really well.  I've been using it for the past 2 weeks for about 5 loads/week and already I can tell a difference.  The true test happened over the weekend when I gave a friend a facial (in another life I was an esthetician).  Normally when I'm done, the towels need to be washed through a couple of loads to get all the oils and masques off.  After one load with this stuff there was absolutely no trace of anything.  After that I was sold.  But I am curious how long this batch will last me to see if it truly is a better deal.  Stay tuned.

The next experiment was the fabric softener, recipe courtesy of The Frugal Girls.  I just love those ladies, so many good ideas.  All you need is 3 simple ingredients. 

6 cups HOT water

3 cups white vinegar

1 - 15 oz (about 2 cups) of Suave Conditioner

Mix the conditioner and water until the conditioner is completely dissolved.  Add the vinegar and mix well.  I poured all of this in an old Downy bottle and use the same amount that I would normally use for each load.  Total spent was about $1.50.  Can't beat that!  At the moment, we use a top loading machine, but I've been reading some of the comments for both recipes and have discovered that these can be used in the new fancy HE machines too.  The only downside to both of these recipes is that you're clothes don't come out as fresh smelling like when you use the name brands.  It's not that they smell bad, it's just that they don't really have a scent at all.  And considering that one of my favorite smells is clean laundry, this is one that will take some getting used to.