Hi, everyone!
The leaves on the trees are mostly still green and the temperatures are in the 70s F. most days, but there are some signs of fall. Grandma and I went to Powers Farm Market, and the tepees are finished! I made lots of pumpkin friends, including a couple of pink pumpkins! There were lots of fall flower plants around, too!
When we went inside the market building, I met a very friendly witch by the fireplace. She has a very comfy lap! Then Grandma asked me if I’d like to see the inside of the tepee. I’ve never done that before and I didn’t know how scary it would be. But I saw some very young children running in and out, so I thought it would be OK. There are carved pumpkins inside the tepee! The middle section is very dark, but I didn’t think it was scary. Then I looked up and saw the skeletons hanging overhead!
In October, Grandma starts getting ready for the Election Day bake sale at church. She was happy when she went to the store and saw that the fall sale on flour and sugar had started. That’s tells her it’s time to begin buying supplies for the bake sale! There’s a limit of two at the sale prices, so we can’t get everything we need in one big purchase. When we got home from the store, I helped Grandma set up the storage boxes for the ingredients. We bought two bags of flour, so we only need 48 more!
Grandma found a nice big head of cauliflower at the store, so we’ve started making soups to feed the bake sale crew. I helped her make cauliflower cheese soup. First the cauliflower has to be broken up into bite-sized pieces, then it is cooked with margarine in Grandma’s stock pot. I helped add the other ingredients, too! When it was done, I helped Grandma cool it down in a cold water bath in the sink. Grandma is very particular about cooling big batches of food down quickly to keep them safe to eat! When the soup was cool, it went into quart-sized containers and right into the freezer. I made sure Grandma labeled every container so we didn’t mix up which soup was which!
The next day, Grandma and I made a coffee cheesecake! That’s James’ and Thomas’ favorite dessert! Most of the batter is flavored with coffee, but part of the batter is flavored with chocolate. My job is to make sure the batters are mixed in a pretty way! Grandma says that’s called “marbling”. I was very careful about the mixing and the cheesecake top came out looking very pretty. The next day, though, we spread chocolate ganache all over the top, so nobody else will ever know what a nice job I did! The cheesecake went into the freezer, too!
Remember the great big butternut squash that Grandma and I bought at the Fairport Farmers Market? Grandma bought some pears, and when they were ripe we made curried butternut squash and pear soup! I sliced up all the pears with Grandma’s pear slicer. The squash was way bigger than we needed for the soup, even though we were making a double recipe. I helped Grandma figure out how much squash we needed by weight, so we could cut off the right sized piece. After the soup cooked, Grandma and I blended it by batches, then I used the chilling paddle to cool the soup down. This soup went in the freezer, too!
On our way back from the bay last Saturday, we stopped at Burnap’s Farm Market to buy some tomatoes. There was going to be a potluck luncheon after church on Sunday, and Grandma planned to make a favorite recipe from the church cookbook. Tomato pie starts with a biscuit-type crust that has sour cream in it, then gets a layer of sliced fresh tomatoes. The topping is a mixture of mayonnaise, mustard and shredded cheddar cheese. I helped spread the crust in the pie plate. Grandma sliced the tomatoes so I wouldn’t get my paws messy. Then I helped spread the topping all over. The kitchen smelled wonderful when the pie was baked!
Grandma decided she wanted to turn the back yard ivy patch into a springtime flower meadow, so she and Grandpa bought 190 daffodil bulbs at Costco. Daffodils are the only spring flowers the deer won’t eat! I helped her start planting bulbs on Saturday afternoon. We used a long-handled bulb planter to cut through the ivy and got the first 25 bulbs planted. On Sunday afternoon, we planted another 60 bulbs. Planting bulbs is hot work when the temperatures are in the high 70s F.! Grandma has to wear long pants and long sleeves to keep the mosquitoes from biting her. I’m lucky that the mosquitoes don’t like the taste of little lion!
On Monday, we had record rainfall for the day — 2.4 inches — as the remnants of hurricane Nate moved over the area. Since we couldn’t do more planting, we made more soup! This batch was Hungarian mushroom. I helped Grandma by slicing up the mushrooms in the food processor and adding them to the other ingredients. And of course, I had soup cooling duty again! This soup is now in the freezer, too, but Grandma had to do some rearranging to find room for it!
Yesterday was dry and cooler, so Grandma and I finished planting the daffodils. This big stretch of ivy now has almost two hundred daffodil bulbs under it! I can’t begin to imagine how it will look in the springtime when they bloom!
Today is rainy again. Grandma says we finished planting the daffodils just in time! I was relieved when she said we didn’t need to make any more soup, because I don’t know where we’d store it! We have all we need to feed the Election Day bakers and maybe even enough for our stollen party at Christmas! Now we can concentrate on getting the rest of the bake sale ingredients!
Love,
Lion-san
It is great that you are starting to collect ingredients for the bake sale. The spot where you put all those daffodil bulbs will look really pretty in the spring. It is great that you don’t get bit by mosquitoes! Nancy-san and Joe-san wish they didn’t either. All that soup you made for the likes of us. You and Grandma work so hard for the bake sale!
Yes, the daffodils will look beautiful in the spring in a big mass and they will come back each spring.
Grandma and you have some fine cooking traditions you do each year. So glad you are learning to cook, Lion San and are able to help her!
Perhaps you and Grandma will be able to make a bouquet of daffodils to display on the flower shelf in church some Sunday morning next Spring! And I am looking forward to enjoying some of that yummy soup at the Election Day Bake Sale in a couple of weeks!