Soup!

This is a change for the blog - not writing about grandkids!  Or knitting!  I like trying new recipes and during the last six weeks with Laura living here we tried quite a few new ones.  It was fun having her in the kitchen helping and talking about whether we really wanted to make it the way the recipe said or change it to our idea of how it should be.  The best one we tried was called the Rich Italian Sausage and Potato soup.  It is on the All Recipes web site where I seem to get most my new recipes - I get an email from them every day with suggestions and this one was a huge hit.  I have to say it is the best soup I ever made. 

I made a few changes to it - I used regular bacon because I could find the pancetta bacon (and never heard of it before) and the second time I made it I used half and half instead of the heavy cream.  It was cheaper and I actually thought it tasted better.  I also used more potatoes than it called for simply because we like potatoes.   For the chicken broth, I have been saving the liquid that remains in the crock pot after fixing a whole chicken in it and freezing it in small bags - about a cup each.   I had never cooked with kale before so that was fun.  Also discovered that kale does not keep well - if you don't use it all - throw it away your refrigirator will smell most unpleasant.  I think next time I will cook the sausage in with the bacon and onions instead of baking it in the oven. 

Here is a link to the soup recipe - hope you enjoy it too.

Italian Sausage and Potato soup

Yarn Hop 2012

Again this year I participated in the Central Kansas Yarn Hop.  It is always fun to see the different shops and the new yarns but this year was more fun as two retired friends were able to go along too plus Laura was here so she went as our official photographer.  :)   Many shops were quite impressed when we explained she didn't have a passport to be stamped because she was our photographer.   It was quite the running joke throughout the day.  

The day started by picking up Sandy Leithoff and heading to Melissa King's house.  Melissa lives north of town and had invited us for breakfast - and what a feast that was.  Melissa is a great cook and got many of us at work involved in the freezer cooking method which we all loved.  She also cans and makes jellies and always explains that "it is so easy".  Ha!    The breakfast was just amazing! 

Our first stop was in  El Dorado.  This was my third visit to the ElDorado shop and the third building it has been in.  This shop is in an old house and we missed it the first time we went by.  

Next was Newton - which is in a huge building that also houses four other types of businesses.   She has a marvelous selection of crochet thread - every color they offer.  This was the best smelling shop too as other other shops in the building had candles and food items for sale.  We purchased some peppernuts and a dry corn soup mix that I now wish I had bought the larger size - it is fabulous.

Then we went to McPherson, Salina and Abilene.  After dropping off Melissa, Sandy and I stopped at Twist on our way home.  The Salina shop is the largest of all the shops and the gals there are super nice and friendly.  The Abilene shop is the smallest but had good sale items and has the best name "The Shivering Sheep"

 
Since Dennis and I had a trip planned for Texas the next day, these were the only shops I got to visit during the hop.  Next year we are planning a longer day by starting early in the morning at Wamego and then "Hopping" along the way back.  It was great fun - I don't think there was a moment of silence the whole day and an awful lot of laughter. 

Kindergarten Pumpkin Patch

The girls had a field trip to the pumpkin patch that is across from the August airport - I had never heard of this place but it is awesome and they had a fabulous time.  They rode the bus and I met them there and was "in charge" of them which I was very happy to do.  The first thing they saw was a huge slide - it was built on a hill and looked way too big for them but all their classmates and their teachers were going on it so grandma kept quiet and stood and watched them come down.  Lily and Audrey are so light they were going to fast and tumbled along with sliding and didn't try it a second time.  Izzy is heavy enough that she did fine and went a second time.  The place also had a huge air pillow - it was a bouncy device that the kids climbed up the side and then bounced on top.  They loved it.  I think they could have spent all day bouncing on it.  They also climbed around on hay bales, rode tricycles around a path, played on playground equipment and went through a milo maze which is like a corn maze but a lot shorter and quicker.   Then of course we rode the wagon out to the pumpkin patch where they got to pick out pumpkins which were much bigger than I expected them to be.  All in all it was a great morning and we all had a lot of fun.

Sunset

I love Kansas and one thing I really love about Kansas is the beautiful sunsets we have. This is a picture I took a couple of weeks ago of the sunset when we were at the Trailerhood.    The sunrise is almost as nice but there are trees blocking the view so it doesn't come out quite as well.

West of the trailer is a cotton field.  I never think of cotton when I think of the crops of Kansas, but apparently it is quite popular.  We see a lot of fields in that area.

I love the Trailerhood but not always the uninvited "friends" we have there.  Different weekends seem to have different pests.  Mice are found now and then - knock on wood - we haven't found any in a couple of months.  Once we had a snake crawling up the outside of the trailer and peeking inside the window at us.  That was really not a good experience.   Another time there were tons of wasps - we used two cans of wasp spray before we bought a wasp trap that worked great.  Flies are bad occasionally and spiders were abundant outside last time.  Dennis and I were sitting by the firepit side by side when I turned to say something to him and a spider was hovering from a tree between us.  I felt like Little Miss Muffett.  I jumped so high I think Dennis thought I had seen a snake. 

Yarn Bombing

After we finished the Rumble in Delano (previous post) we all drove out to WSU to see the yarn bombing.  Knitters and crocheters had covered statues, trees, flower gardens, and you name it with yarn creations.  The work and expensive of the yarn was tremendous. Many of the creations had to be placed on the objects then the knitter had to sew the seam so these gals were there a long time setting this up.  The results were beautiful and fun.  Many people were at WSU  wandering around campus all week looking at the creations.   The sign above explains the project better than I so I think if you click on the picture you will be able to read it.  I was proud that Twist (my favorite yarn shop) was mentioned as a sponsor of the event.  I am sure that Shelly (the owner) was annoyed at the newspaper article that instead of interviewing her, interviewed the owner of another yarn shop in town that had nothing to do with it.  Yarn bombings happen all over the world and it was very exciting to see it happen here in Wichita.  The yarn creations were only up for a week - but there are rumors there will be another bombing in town some day.

Wolf in sheep clothing with three silly girls

Rumble in Delano

The annual car show on west Douglas is called the Rumble in Delano.  It has cars, pretty girls and loud music - plus food vendors. What more could a person want.  We met Jimmy and family at TJ's diner and had their delicious hamburgers - best in town then walked along Douglas and looked at the cars.  It is a perfect size car show - enough cars to interest the adults but not so many the girls got bored. 
 Some of the cars are just beautiful

Others were just very interesting - this one was a huge hit with Izzy - didn't think we would ever get her away from it.

and some were just funny.

Check out the phone between the seats

State Fair - Day 9 - last day

The last day was a lot of fun thanks to our son and his family coming.  We had a great time with the girls and their folks.  We saw the seal show, helped put tiles in the mosaic the art council had set up, saw the rabbits and poultry, had a little picnic at the camper, got faces painted, rode carnival rides and rode the sky lift that took us from one end of the fairgrounds to the other.   We ended the day with free ice cream again and three very tired little girls and their equally tired parents headed back home. 

State Fair Day 8

Day 8 at the fair was rather boring but Day 9 made up for it.  On Day 8 we saw the Boeing Jazz band, spent time at the Watusi cattle show and spent quite awhile going through the commercial buildings one more time in case we missed a handy dandy kitchen gizmo or something else that we can't imagine how we lived so long without.  Some of the presenters are pretty funny - I overheard one giving a kitchen show and he was passing out toothpicks so the audience could taste the things he had cooked during the demonstration - "ok folks, this is the next to the last day and I am running low on toothpicks, so if you could just lick them clean after you try the food and put them back in the container, maybe I won't run out" 

The Ankole-Watusi is a breed of cattle originally native to Africa. Its large, distinctive horns that can reach up to 8 feet (2.4 m) from tip to tip, are used for defense. Ankole-Watusis weigh from 900 to 1,600 pounds (410 to 730 kg).  (thank you Wikipedia)

State Fair Day 7

More fun - more amazement.  The chainsaw artist is so talented !  We watched him for a little while earlier in the week and today sat and watched the whole process.   I can't imagine how he can take part of a tree and a variety of chainsaws and end up with the cool things he makes.

We also watched the Celebrity Goat Milking contest (which Roger Cornish said "I don't know where they get the celebrity goats).   We finished the day with the pig races.  The pigs are really nothing but the two kids (in their 20's) are great comedians.  They had us all laughing with their corny silly jokes.

State Fair - Day 6

Thursday was another fabulous day - although if you looked at the weather for that day you would think we should have had a bad day.   It rained and rained most of the day but we planned for a day of rain and took movies and spent the afternoon just being lazy in the camper, watching movies and of course I knitted.  It was a nice afternoon off.  The morning was spent at the Domestic Art's building.  It was so great to spend so long just walking around looking at the displays.  Usually we go to the fair for a day so there isn't time to study the projects but this time there was plenty of time.   In the past I have won two blue ribbons for cross stitch and one project also won best of show.  My goal is to also win a ribbon for crochet and one for knitting so I took my time looking at those projects.  I am thinking I might be able to get a ribbon for a crochet project but the knitting projects with ribbons were really amazing.  I doubt I could match the talents of the knitters that entered this year.

The quilts always amaze me - the small fall quilt that won ribbons was so beautiful and was so much work.  It was hand quilted and the quilting designs were just darling - little ghosts, spiders, pumpkins and the stitches were perfect.  Some of the large quilts confused me - there was one that won a blue ribbon and the blocks were not even and the points were not even close to perfect.  I made a quilt many years ago and if I my blocks had turned out like that,  I would have resewed them and certainly wouldn't have entered it in the fair.  I can't understand at all how it won a ribbon.  Others were amazingly beautiful and didn't win anything.  Of course there isn't room to display the whole quilt so some had pictures attached of the quilt spread out - I wish they did that for all of them.

I took so many pictures and it has been very difficult to decide which ones to put in the blog - I want to put them all in!

These are all buttons!

All of these items are made from duct tape.

Good to know the small crochet items won instead of the big.

This is the fall quilt that was just marvelous

Fabulous crochet!

Lace knit shrug - really difficult

Cross stitch

Knitting projects

Probably my favorite project after the fall quilt

Mine is the lower right