You asked for it...

I have had a few inquiries as to what I do with all these peppers I grow!  I really do use them all, and I don't see myself as being a pepper freak, but maybe I am - you be the judge...

Got Hot?

or sweet?

There's lots to see here, so don your mask and gloves and let's get started!

Sweet Bell Peppers are easy, no blanching, just chop and freeze.  They go into everything, all winter long - stir fry, soups, stews, sausage casseroles, anything goes here.

Even the frozen bell peppers will keep pasta salad lively long after the tomatoes are gone...

The old standard, salsa...

Nachos!

Jalapeno Cheddar Cornbread Muffins

Garden Convenience Food - stuffed peppers, frozen and bagged... dump a few out and bake in oven with a bit of tomato sauce and cheese makes a quick meal...

Of course there are days when there are more than I can use at dinner...

ya think?

Canning keeps us in nachos (Garden Junk Food) and chili all winter long -

Hubby likes jalapenos on his pizza sometimes :)

I use diced jalapenos or green chiles to jazz up the chicken filling inside enchiladas -

But wait, there's more!

Jalapenos can be frozen whole for more Garden Junk Food in winter...

One of my favorites is Stuffed Baked Jalapenos -

I halve them, seed them, stuff with a mixture of cooked sausage and cream cheese, sprinkle cheddar cheddar and french fried onions over the top and bake, the ultimate!  I never said this was healthy :) (*you can also make ahead a few hundred and freeze on sheets then dump into bags, ready to go party food!)

Excess small hot peppers are dried for grinding later or making fermented hot sauce.  Larger chiles such as Poblanos can be dried and soaked later in the year to turn into stuffed Anchos.  (Fun fact - Poblano peppers are called Ancho Chiles after they are dried).  Anchos ground and mixed with other spices such as oregano, savory, salt, pepper, dried garlic, etc make a great steak rub, too!  Drying is the quickest way to preserve for sure!

If I have a little extra time on my hands, I'll roast and peel the Poblanos and pressure can so they are ready to go all winter for Chiles Rellenos.

Peppers are always welcome in tacos here -

Canned sweet or mild peppers or peppers packed in oil are always good on sandwiches or panini, stuff them right into jars with your pickles, don't discriminate!  It'll give those pickles some kick, too :)

Apparently I've made quite a name for myself as the pepper-chick, hence this gift that arrived a ways back from the lovely Apple Pie Gal....  :)

Now even my beverages are decorated in pepper style!

Party Fun:  host a dinner party, then stuff peppers of random heat into homemade sushi and watch people's expressions, this is good times!  Kind of like loading a bunch of .38's along with a randomly placed .357 in your gun just to keep you on your toes.  Come on, I know a few girls out there that have done that, usually courtesy of your laughing husband, right?

So there you have it, the most common pepper dishes at our home - 

Embrace the pepper!

The annual outing...

Nope, it's not ecologically "sensitive", green in even the tiniest way, "sustainable", or a celebration of any type of homegrown goodness, but it is our livelihood... the military aircraft!  This weekend was the annual air show here at the base, and we go every year, rain or shine.  This year it rained the whole time, and although we were a bit wet it was still fun.  For one day we enjoy eardrum splitting noise, sonic booms, flames, the smell of jet fuel and hydraulic fluid, and fuel consumption numbers that would make you cringe - that's our life and we're sticking to it, for another 8 years, anyway!

Finn taking a break from the rain...

How often does a kid get to stand here?

Finn loves helos, much to hubby's dismay :)

 Finnegan again...

In the evening the kids hooked up with their friends easily, since most of the crowd willing to attend in the rain involved the Navy families.  They are enjoying the fireworks...

After the air show out on the tarmac, we were treated to our own private one courtesy of hubby.  We walked down to his hangar where incidentally he had to actually work on real squadron stuff all weekend, and he was able to give the grand tour to my parents.  My brother flies C-130's so being in a hangar isn't new to them, but F/A-18 SuperHornets are.  It was nice to be out of the rain, although hubby is currently working on a few jets in there and the lovely chemical/fuel/hydraulic scent in there was a bit overpowering with the hangar doors closed.

The "non-air show" real deal - hubby's hangar! -

He got to work in here all by himself all weekend, instead of being out in the rain with us!

Kids love bombs.  You know it, even kids who say they don't like bombs, love bombs :)

You mean you don't let your kids play with bombs?  Hubby never gets the memo on these things.

  

Finn making his fist of fury... not sure if it was hydraulic fluid, jet fuel or testosterone I was smelling in there! 

All right, I won't subject you to any more of this, I'll return to my normally scheduled posts on the finer points of homesteading and family managing next time, I promise.  But if you are ever out our way and want to admit that you want to touch a bomb, I'm your girl and we'll hook you up! :)

Catch Up

My parents are on their way back to Minnesota today, and I'm back!  We had a good visit, but it rained EVERY DAY!  We are on our 6th or 7th day straight of rain, heat and humidity and I am so ready for fall.  I still have not planted the fall garden and the lawn is about 8 inches high, soggy, mushrooms sprouting all over, yuck!  During a few hour break in the rain mom helped me bring peppers in, I thought the end must be near, but I still have a lot out there ripening.  We did bring in quite a bunch the other day that needed to be frozen and/or canned.  All of the bell peppers were frozen, the Anchos hung to dry, and the jalapenos were canned.

I was lazy and raw packed them into rings instead of scorching and peeling since there were so many.  I got 7 pints of jalapenos to add to the rest of the stash in the pantry.  The verdict this year is that 3 plants is just not quite enough, so I'll plant 4 from now on.  If you remember, 9 plants was way too many, I was harvesting about 100 a week, 6 plants was still a bit of an overload last year so I dropped it to 3.  Yes, we eat a LOT of jalapenos, probably 2 pints a month LOL.  3 years later, I think I have it dialed in finally.  

We pulled the plants, so this brings the total of jalapenos for 2011 to 10 lbs, I think 15 would be about perfect, and of that I squirreled away 11 pints and 4 half-pint jars for the year.

Of course, we had to use up some of the bell peppers fresh! 

everyone knows of my favorite dish for the garden, stir fry

Mom also has finally decided I'm worthy of some family photos!  Really nice ones that I had never seen before, like this gem:

Isn't that cool?  That's dad on the right.  I also had him list a string of cars he owned starting with his first one, and wow - that's a fun list!  Needless to say, I have some good material to get me started on my next project - wait for it - 

- I have decided to (gasp) start scrapbooking, you know, in all my spare time :)  Yet another hobby I used to laugh at and say I would never do...what's happening to me?!  I also got filled in on a lot of family history I didn't know about, and random fun facts about the family and my parents specifically.  Of course it would be great if mom would pen a history for me but I'll settle for dumping boxes of "stuff" on my desk to sort through myself LOL :)  Hopefully one day I'll have some nice things put together for our family and my brothers' families to share, with actual captions so we know what the heck we're looking at.

Honest, someday soon I really will be planting my fall garden, but it has to stop raining first!  Next up I'll post about our annual air show fun, not interesting to everyone I realize, but it's our livelihood LOL...

I have gotten back into knitting the past week and have sorted through my seeds for fall, so I'm slowly making the change to the new season....

Look, it's a mom!

Even better... it's MY mom!

She got here just in time... after raining all weekend the sun is now out and I need some help in the garden :)

Dad will be here on Thursday for a long weekend and I'm sure we'll do some fun things but for right now I'm looking forward to turning the kids over to her for a few days :)

Sunday News!

Ok, I'm ready to spill the beans!  A while back I alluded to something that was causing a bit of stress, but that we were all "a-ok" - well, here's the big development...

FOR SALE!

As of Friday, our house is officially on the market.  It may seem as a bit out of the blue, but I'm a person that tends to stew on things for awhile quietly, but when a decision has been made, things need to happen right away, I call it "ripping the band-aid off".  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE this house, I mean LOVE it - you should have seen this place when I first set foot here back in 1994, suffice it to say that it is completely different now than it was, and 100% of it was DIY sweat-equity.  That being said, I have also been a landlord for about 17 years now (I was here way before hubby entered the picture), and I'm just kind of ready to get all my eggs back in our own basket now.  Being a landlord provided us with much needed income to make the place into just what we wanted and needed, however we have some long-term plans for military retirement that most of you know don't include living here in Virginia.  For the past few years I have been content to sort of "ride out the market", feeling sorry for those that had to sell in these times, but I'm sure that you all have been hearing lately about the fact that now predictions are for this housing market to be this way for another 10 years or so.  I'm thinking that interest rates might not stay so low, however, so now is the time to try to attract a buyer while we still in no hurry to depart the area.  We have several years left before hubby's done with the military gig, but when saddled with multiple mortgages up until the end we lose the ability and freedom to even look seriously or move on a future property for us.  The best thing we could do on a future property would be to secure it a bit before retirement, as we all know it's easier to qualify for a mortgage when gainfully employed:)!


So that's it, in a nutshell - we've been busy doing things around here like the neglected weatherstripping, putting a few things into storage that were crowding the house a bit, etc.  I've also had to back off the gardening a bit by getting rid of some things that look high maintenance and spending more time on the perennial beds and such.  Now, we just need to find the few people out there that are both looking for a house AND can afford a house, no small feat in today's economy.  We are lucky in that it appraised well, we aren't underwater, aren't looking to get rich, and have steady rental income and a great tenant already in place.  We are actually hoping an investor type buyer will be interested and are willing to sign on as tenants ourselves, which would equal instant monthly profit for the future buyer.  That would be the ideal, since I could continue to enjoy my big garden and house we love without the worry about having to stay past hubby's "time's up!" day because of the house.  Bottom line, we'll spend a bit more monthly to live, BUT we would be truly free to look at our future options and act on them if the right thing came along.  Clear as mud?  LOL...


Until who knows when now, my day consists of getting the kids out the door and immediately getting dressed and ready, house picked up by 8 am "just in case" I get a text that someone wants to see the house... then I have to round up my dog's, the neighbor's dog and we go to the park and get lost for awhile.  Between little maintenance items last week, I've had the realtor here to do the appraisal, photographer to do the pics, Miss Utility to spray lines so they can spike the sign in, whew!  One nice thing is that I really like our realtor, and I'm very comfortable with her.  I've never sold a house before and it's all pretty intimidating, so a good realtor is a must - we did purchase the house without a realtor and I did most all of the paperwork, and I'm not doing that again - that only works well in a good economy when people are banging down your door to buy (I don't see any banging!).


So now you know :)... and I am very envious of all of you that are already firmly entrenched in your "forever homes", but I understand nothing comes easy so this is our first step.... now where are the buyers?!

It's finally Friday!

It's been a busy week, and I'm glad that it's Friday evening!  Before I head out to finally tackle the garden, I'll purge some of the highlights of the week here :)

Loch's open house at the Math & Science Academy was this week, and he was eager to show us his new school.

Here's their garden, ready for fall planting!

Posing in front of the school

Showing off the school's new t-shirt design, and check out the dolphin, it's covered in money!

They have a gazillion class pets in his classroom, some kind of bearded dragon, 2 other unknown lizards, turtles, crickets (for food, I presume), fish and...

Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches!  The masking tape made me laugh - when we went to tour the school last spring the teacher told us all about how the huge cockroaches escaped last year and had to be rounded up, I guess this is the new solution :)

Here's the "chore board"... check out the upper right hand corner :)

Other events - I got started on my list of maintenance action-items... 

Here's the new pair...

Turns out my days of 20/20 are over, not only did I need glasses, but I am now going to be sporting multifocals - I imagine I'm in for a nice surprise when the glasses are in and I first pick up a book again!  Wow, glasses are expensive.  Of course the eye doctor quoted about $600, I almost choked - then I hightailed it over to BJ's (our equivalent to Costco), they were cheaper than anywhere else and I was able to order virtually the same pair for $196.  Still expensive, but at least now I will be able to see.  At $600 I think I'd stay blind!

I might have mentioned it's still been in the high 80's and 90's still here, no longer!  Yesterday the temp fell 20º in 20 minutes!  We were leaving music lessons hot and sweaty, when the winds picked up to about 35 and the cool air just started blowing in fast.  I felt like doing a happy dance in the parking lot!

what a difference!

My eye appt prompted me to go ahead and get my haircut (for the first time since last November!), which prompted me to go home and "wash that gray right outta my hair", that culminated in eyebrow tweezing and a home pedicure.  None of those things will help my blood pressure but they sure improved my outlook!  

It's 65º outside right now and after dinner, I WILL go outside and see what the garden has for me, I have really neglected it for about 10 days, and from the back door I can see what looks like red confetti all over the beds... cherry tomatoes I'm sure!  Oooops.....