Weekend Whirl

This weekend was all about family, food and cooking:

Friday evening:
*oldest son and his son arrived for deer season.

Saturday:
*breakfast with sons #1 and #3 and their sons at the Downtowner; joined by friends with their daughter.
*shopping at Wal-Mart (ugh, but sometimes we gotta go because there's nowhere else to get certain things)
*grocery store
*feed store
*junk shop (came out with two crystal wineglasses, a glass casserole, and a neat Christmas gift for son #3)
*home to clean house and make apple pie and mincemeat tarts
* off to son #3's house for steak dinner with son #1 and friends, admire son #3's truck restoration progress, and enjoyed a late bonfire before coming home. Did you know a bonfire can get so hot that glass bottles will melt enough to soften the glass enough push a long wood stick into the bottle's mouth, and that the bottle will make long glass strings if you pick it up just right? Very cool. (Don't do this at home! But I can see further experiments down the road...)
*home to talk, get the fires going well and off to bed.

Sunday:
*electricity went off just as we were starting coffee. Got the turkey fryer burner and gas tank and cooked bacon, sausage, and eggs; filled a big kettle with water for coffee (tried to use an old 30's era percolator to drip coffee--bad idea!) using individual coffee bags, made toast on the Fisher wood stove and had a great country breakfast despite the outage. Grandson was intrigued by the antique things we used to get the meal together--and I realized that sometimes education happens at unexpected moments.
*power back on just after we ate
*cut the pumpkins to bake and peel for pies later this week (it's much easier to get the pumpkins processed this way--peeling raw pumpkins is just hard to do, and a recipe for getting cut.)
*washed pumpkin seeds and set to dry behind the wood stove (to save for planting next year)
*dried more apple and orange slices
*made potato leek soup with my oldest son--what fun to cook with your grown son! Made cornbread to go with the soup for lunch. Experimented with using cider for half of the milk--good!
*thawed a roasting chicken and prepared it with herbs and butter; roasted it with potatoes, carrots, onions and herbs for dinner.
*washed a few loads of laundry
*worked on apple and orange garlands for the Christmas tree. (Photos soon).

I had registered to go to a writing workshop but when I realized my oldest son was coming and that son #3 was off work this weekend, I decided to stay home.

A wise decision, and a wonderful weekend.