Our Harvest - And some pumpkin Brownies.

Here is a picture of my Pumpkin brownies. I waited till the very last day of the month to make them....but I decided I did it on purpose for a special Halloween treat.

They were delicious! I think I will make them again.

We were able to harvest some of the fruit from our yard this year. Besides drying apricots, we bottled peaches:

And juiced some pomegranates:

This is a picture of our homemade pomegranate juice. It was delicious.....after we added about a cup of sugar to it, because it was originally pretty tart.

Jack-O-Lanterns

The Kids, like always around Halloween time, are very excited. They drew their jack-o-lanterns so that I could carve them. Isabella's is a puppy with floppy ears (and a big seed for its tongue) and Aiden's is a very small face with a hat; mine is the holey one.

A Dress for Bella

Today I felt crafty, so I made a dress for Isabella. It took between two to three hours to complete and I am very happy with the results.

 Pumpkin Brownie
 I liked the recipe it was easy to make and the taste was good. It may have tasted better if I hadn't taken it out 10 minutes too late. Even with that little mishap the final result was not too bad, the middle pieces were actually nice and moist.

Light-to-Medium

Yesterday, while we were watching television, I was told/reminded by Jared that I am a minority. After some contemplation and a lot of laughter I thank him for reminding me, I really did forget that fact. Some times I think of myself as just the weirdo who learned to pronounce words differently.
Every time I'm looking at statistics for anythings, schools, housing districts, etc I look at the percentage of Latinos in that area (note how I wrote "Latinos" instead of "Hispanic" I've decided I don't like the latter term for its discriminative connotations). I want to move to a diversified area, I don't want my kids to be the only...I don't know what really, what are they anyway? So I looked closely and I found a new section when describing kids population in school, there is a subgroup label "multiracial" which is kind of funny to me since I think anybody could be classified as that or is it just me? But if it is me then so could my children. But then again I don't have a race anymore since Hispanic was decided not to be race in the last census, I felt like such a funny going back to marking white for race; I think I would be more comfortable being labeled as "nonracial" or maybe just "light-to-medium",or instead of trying so hard to find a racial label for myself just mark "other" but "other" is so impersonal, it sounds very "I don't belong", so it is back to "light-to-medium" because that is what I look like.

October Pumpkin Brownie Recipe

I decided to go with a festive Pumpkin recipe for October.

Pumpkin Brownies

1 1/2 c. sugar
2 eggs
1 c. pumpkin
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1 tsp. soda
1/2 c. oil
1/2 c. water
2 c. flour
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ginger
12 oz. chocolate chips

Beat sugar and oil; add eggs, water, and pumpkin. Add rest of ingredients and blend. Stir in 12 ounces chocolate chips. Bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes. Use a 9 x 13 inch greased and floured pan.

September Foods

Here is the cake shortly after I made it, and tried to cut part of it. Even though I had put it in the fridge to cool for a while, it was still a gooey mess. I used a 9x13" pan because I don't have a 10x15; and I didn't put pecans in it because I don't like nuts. When I first tried the cake it was mostly just a gooey blob of chocolate that seemed extra rich and I didn't really like it. The next day I gave it a second try before throwing it out, and I liked it. Once I gave it time to set up I could taste the marshmellows and the cake wasn't just a glob of goo anymore it was super yummy....so I would make this again. Maybe the next time I'm in charge of a dessert for pack meeting!

This is the September marinaded chicken. You may notice that it doesn't look like chicken and you're right it doesn't, because it isn't, 'cause if it was, it would. It is pork marinaded in soda. Now, the soda was not Pepsi, it wasn't even coke...it was ginger ale. I know what you are thinking Liz, "What the...Ginger ale?" Well that is all I had since we are not currently keeping any soda at home, and I didn't want to go to the supermarket to buy just one bottle of soda (and chicken) besides I remember the left over ginger ale from a few months ago. Anyways, the pork tasted good and I'm keeping the recipe since it was easy to make I may make it again soon.

Halloween Crafts

It is October which means Halloween Crafts time! I think Halloween is the best time to make craft, it's the first of fall so...the temperatures are dropping, the leaves are falling down and changing colors, and we are getting excited about the new holiday season. From now on it's family, food, and fun.

These are some of the crafts we have made so far, next is monsters and bats!