Cauliflower from my garden

 

I am so excited about my Cauliflower!  Can you believe this!  We grow a garden every year, but I have never had success with cauliflower, broccholi, or cabbage.  No cabbage this year, but the other two yes!  The cauliflower is ready to pick, and I decided I need to post this.  I cannot believe that we grew this!  It is so cool.  Today, I blanched them and put them in freezer bags and in the freezer for winter eating.  This is a huge hurdle for us to be able to grow such great looking and tasting cauliflower. 

You know about a month ago, I was pretty much giving up on these plants.  They were in a row in the garden, and just tall plants doing nothing really.  So I started taking some of the plants and putting them in my window boxed for fall display.   I thought, "Well, if they can't give me a head, then I can use the plant for decoration in my fall window boxes."  As I was planting them, dug them from the row in the garden, I saw a little start of a cauliflower head on one of the plants.  Mmmm, so I took that one that was starting a head and put it in a pot and in the greenhouse.  Well, maybe I'll get one head this year, I thought.

I planted at least one plant in each of the front flower boxes.  (you know I got this idea from being in France last year in a cute little town that had the most beautiful fall window boxes you have ever seen) 

 

Then as the weather started to cool down, heads started appearing on almost all the cauliflower plants, and within a month here we are with these incredible big heads!  Shows you what I know.  This is on the plant list for next year for sure! 

 

Success!

 

 

 

Maybe I have a tiny bit of my mom's green thumb in me after all.  Well, not just me, Dana too.  He does all the tilling and hard work in the garden, I just plant and weed.  I should talk to the plants too.

 

I also love white.  White, White, White.  So I teamed the mini pumkins from the garden with the cauliflower heads for a fun photo.  What more can I say.  I love it all in white.

 

I made a Cauliflower Garlic with Parmesan with one of these tonight for dinner.  Mmmm it was so good.  Here is the recipie.

 

In a large skillet, heat 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil over medium-high.  Add 4-7 florets of a head of cauliflower trimmed and cut, and cook until the cauliflower begins to brown, about 3 minutes.  Add 1 clove of garlic, thinly sliced and cook, stirring occationally, until the garlic begins to brown.  Season with salt and ground pepper, you can add 1/2 tsp of red-pepper flakes.  Take off the heat, I put on chopped lettuce, and sprinkle grated Parmesan cheese over the top.  

 

This is so delish!

 

 

 

Ciao,

 

Robin

Plum Tart

You know, cooking has never been one of my favorite things in life.  In fact, it really hasn't been where my talents come through.  But Dana and I raised 6 kids, and they didn't starve to death, so we all survived my lack of talent in the kitchen. 
I have tried over time to do better, and become somewhat of a cook.  I watch FoodNetwork alot and have my favorite chefs.  Barefoot Contessa and Sandra Lee are on the top of my watch list. I have learned so much from both of them, and find inspriation with thier dishes.
Today, I had plums in the fridge and thought.  I need to make German Plum Tart. 
Last year the first of Novermber we flew from Ethiopia to Stuttgart, Germany to vacation for a while before we returned to Utah.  It was quite needed, as we worked our hearts out on our mission and were exhausted.  So rest, vacation, and real food were high on the list of needs.
Did you know in Ethiopia they use very little sugar and salt.  So most things lack the taste we are used.  So to land in Germany with a plethera of pastry stores, I was truely in heaven. 
We were so excited to see fall again.  The crisp air and beautiful trees became such a site for me.  I so loved it.  I am remembering what a wonderful time we had in Germany last year as the air starts turning cooler, the days shorter, and the leaves begin the change.
I was reminded of the wonderful pastries in Germany this week, and those plums were calling me.  Usually I use purple plums, but we had cream colored plums and so that is what I used.  Ohhh, did this ever taste so good!  I found a wonderful bread recipie that is more like a cake bread, and sweet!  Yum!   I will share the recipie with you too. 

 

Plum Tart.  One of my fall favorites for sure.You will love this recipie!

No-Knead Refrigerator Dough

4 to 4 1/2 cups flour
2 pkg active dry yeast
1/2 c sugar
1 t. salt
1 c water, heated to 120-130 degrees
1/2 c margarine or butter, I use butter,  melted
3 eggs

Combine 2 cups of flour, yeast, sugar and salt.  Add HOT water, margarine and eggs.  Mix at low speed until moistened, beat 2 minutes at medium speed.  Stir in 2 to 2 1/2 cups of remaining flour until the dough is stiff. 

I used half this recipie for this tart.  I then sliced 6 medium size plums.  I covered the top of the dough with cream cheese and sugar mixture, then placed the plums in a beautiful circle on the top of the cream cheese mixture.

Bake for 10-13 minutes. 350 degrees F

Love this for sure!!


Ciao,

Robin

Thumbelina Zinnia's

I am preparing the flower beds for the winter right now.  This year has been so fun for me to work in my flower beds and make some major changes, taking away a huge flower bed from the yard, and incorporating more flowers into the current beds. 

I so love to work with dirt, and have to say that I love to weed.  Some days it is a bit exhausting, but as a whole, I like it.  Dana had to help me with one of the fowerbeds this year, it was so full of grass, I could not even pull the clumps out.  He would dig, and I would lift the patch of grass and dirt into the wheelbarrow.  It was a few hours of this to get a 6' x3' area clear of all the grass. This year was a bit harder than most years.  We spent the last 2 years in Ethiopia as Humanitarian Missionaries for our church, and as a result when we arrived home in December last year the flower beds had weeds and grass up to my waist. 

I knew the challenge was on, so I have plugged away on the flower beds one by one, month by month this summer, weeding them over and over again to achive a better look.  NO WEEDS and NO GRASS, I am so excited for this awesome look in my yard.

Almost there, the spring will show my work for sure.  I think that I will be able to enjoy the tulips much more next year with the dirt clear of weeds and grass.  This will bring me great joy as I peer out the bedroom window into the flower beds over the winter and into the spring.

 

Here is a photo of my thumbellina Zinnia/s.  I wanted them to look so cool in this photo, so I tried something new with my photography, and they certainly do.  Love how they look in the flower beds as well. These will dry and be my seeds for next years plants.  I will share pics of the flower beds in a different post later on.  For now I love flowers and life.

Ciao,

Robin

Digging worms in my garden

I love to garden, and when the grandchildren are here when I am weeding, they love to help. But of course in thier own way. I always have little plastic buckets for them to put things in and little shovels. So it was just fun for me to take pictures of these 3 cute little girls in my flower beds. Well, they of course don't weed, but they love to dig for worms. Certainly girls with no fear! And love to save those worms!

In this cute layout is our 2 year old grandaugher Kaydence, she just had her 3rd birthday last week. I used some different papers together that just look awesome together. I used leaf stripe as my background cardstock, then I used leaf print paper. I cut out the leaf groupings and glued them up in the corners to look like tree leaves coming down the edge of the layout. I also used the back side of black and white pine cone to cut the leaves and swirls out of under the flowers. I used 2 colors of glitter pink cardstock and flower punches to create the flowers. I cut out the words digging out of brown cardstock. She is a beauty digging for the worms.

Kaydence's sister are in the second layout digging for worms too. I used the back side of black and white pinecone cardstock for the background. I also used glitter getaway leaf for the borders and the frame on the right side of the layout. The "In Grandmas Garden" is cut out with the cricut with kiwi glitter sorbet as well as the shape with Aliyah's picture in it. The swirls are cut out with the cricut out of glitter spring stripe. I also used journaling tags in both layouts. Green mini dew drops and razzleberry dew drops are used in the layouts. I also used large clear dew drops in the layouts.

I have had fun the last few days working on these layouts, and loving my grandkids all over again. This is such a joy. Enjoy, You can find these papers on our website.

Enjoy!

Ciao,

Robin

Cabo San Lucas 9x9 mini book

Hello to all. 
I posted this on my Chattering Robin's Blog today and want to share with you too!  I love this book!

It is so fun to be able to share with you my project I have been working on for the last few weeks. Every extra moment I have had I sneek up to the scrapbook room and work on this book with the photos we had taken on the beach in Cabo San Lucas. We love going there for sure, and having this book finished just gives me great joy. I wanted to do something just a bit different with my book this time, you know I love to create books, so as we walked the beach and did different things I saved little things to bring home and use on my creation. Here is the cover of the book. I used the Glitter Seashore cardstock for the cover, and I used the blue chipboard for the cover, so the chipboard is covered with the Glitter Seashore cardstock and then as you open the book it shows the blue chipboard. On the cover of the book I used: Beach sticker, Fish RN Paper Clips, Chipboard shapes, Chipboard fleur, Glitter Write Cardstock and seashells and driftwood from the beach.

I love the color combinations and how beautiful they accent the photo on the front of the book. I die cut the words Cabo San Lucas with my Cricut, and I framed the photo with the backside of the Glitter Seashore Cardstock. The frame is edged with a Fiskars border punch. Love, love, love how this looks!

Here are close ups of the front of the book, the glitter fish paper clips, the tags, and the driftwood and seashells. I adhered the seashells and driftwood with Scraperfects glue.

This is the first pages of the book. I used the blue chipboard as the backing of the left side of the page, then added copied lined paper, stamped for my journaling. I have done this on most of the book. I also used tags and some embellishments from other companies.

The right side of the book page is made from the Glitter Coral cardstock. Doesn't it look elegant here! The photo is framed in blue cardstock and then again with the back side of Glitter Pink Crackle. I also used a blue journaling tag, and blue glitter letters. Dew drops throughout the book are dd202 bubbles, they are mini dew drops. Such an elegant look for a beach page!

This next page is Breezy, my hair was blowing in the wind, not like a cute actress by any means, but it was a nice breezy day on the beach, so I wanted to reflect this with the page. The right side of the book page is the back side of the Glitter Coral cardstock, so I didn't have to use another sheet of paper! Again I used a copied sheet of lined paper for my journaling. Other products used on these book pages are: Glitter Blue Rasberry Sorbet Cardstock (the right side background), Palm Rub on, dew drops, strip of the back side of Glitter Coral Cardstock. Other companies embellishments were

also used on this page.

Here is page 5 and 6 of the book, again the left side background is the Glitter Blue Rasberry Sorbet. The right side is Glitter Awning Swirl, I also used the extra sheet for the right side of the page, I cut around the edge of the glitter swirls to create this look. This book is 9x9, so when the 12x12 sheet is cut to 9x9 there are extra strips left to use, this is where the extra swirls I cut for the edge come from. I also used a teal glitter journaling tag on this page. All the photos are 5x7.

On pages 7 and 8 of the book, I decided I wanted to have both sides of the book the same cardstock, so both pages are cut from Glitter Coral Cardstock, and I used the back side of Glitter Pink Crackle to frame the photo in,and go behind the "in love" letters. I used a tag from a pair of pants I bought for the tag and cut some glitter coral from the extra strip to place on the tag. I also used Red glitter letters, and Viva Rub on. All other embellishements, tags and letters are from other companies. I filled the 'O" with dew drops to pop and add texture. Here are close ups of the tag and the dew drop covered "O".

This created such a cute look for the page, and give the book some great texture.

I just love how pages 8 and 9 turned out. Just fun papers, again the left side is the back side of the Glitter Coral Cardstock, The right side is Boy Linen Dot. I mostly used embelishments from other companies on these pages, but the Journaling tag is Glitter blue, and the redefining H2O is from a magazine that I cut out and used here.

Close up of the top right hand corner.

Now comes my favorite pages. 10 and 11. The left side of the page is the back side of Teal Giraffe Cardstock. The right side is Glitter Seashore Cardstock. This is my single favorite photo of us, I just love it when he kisses me! Products used on this page: Blue Glitter Journaling tag, Glitter Write Cardstock, brown cardsock, Chipboard fleur. All other embellishments are from other companies.

Close up of the right side.

The last page of the book is also using the Glitter Seashore Cardstock, used for both sides, again the left side is just the back side of the page before, no extra paper needed for the page. I used the Beach sticker, Glitter Write Cardscok, and cut extra glitter seashells from an extra strip and popped them at the bottom of the page. Other embellishements are from other companies on this page.

Whew, This was quite an undertaking for me to finish, and my scrapbook table is clean from all the glitter, the stacks of paper and embellishements that have been scattered all over it, ready for a new project. Love to scrapbook for sure, but more than anything I love the look of these paper. Great Job to Rachel for designing them. Such a fun elegant beach book.

Till next time,

Ciao,

Robin

Creations of Joy

Hello out there.

Today I created this new blog.  This is a new adventure for me to have a blog that is just about the things I love to do, create, and share.  Maybe this first post should be about me and the things I love the most.
So here I go!  I love to create!  It doesn't matter really, I love to try and do many different things.  Those things include sewing, crafting, scrapbooking, designing, painting, whew!, what else?  Those are on the top of the list. There are many more but I won't go into them all.  Cooking has never been on the top of the list of my talents, however, my husband and I raised 6 children and none of them starved. 
My best friend is my husband Dana.  I attribute who I am to him.  He has given me the confidence to become a better person and a more organized thinker.  He has given me the confindence to succeed even when I didn't think I could.  He has given me security and helped me to see myself as a successful woman.  I truely love him.
We married 38 years ago, and my life has never been the same since.  There are always things going on in our lives, and we keep ourselves quite busy even though  at this time in our lives we are retired.  There is rarely boredom with us, and he is a worker for sure.  As time goes on I will share these things with you. 
As for now, I will start sharing (posting) with you the things that I love to do.  They will be varied and I hope there are some readers out there that will enjoy them.  Maybe we can share with each other, I love to learn from others as well.  I look forward to meeting new friends!

For now,  Ciao,

Robin