I finally put up the fire pit today! Can't wait for smores on a cool fall night :-)

I've decided teaching (and driving 50 min each way) isn't for me, so I'm going to quit and open my own bakery... if only it were that easy. :-)

*Sigh*

We went fishing again today. The weather was perfect and I caught 3.5 fish (the 4th one didn't quite make it into the boat). Did I mention I love fall>?!?

All I really need is a cheap riesling...

The September 2010 Daring Cooks' challenge was hosted by John of Eat4fun. John chose to challenge The Daring Cooks to learn about food preservation, mainly in the form of canning and freezing. He challenged everyone to make a recipe and preserve it. John's source for food preservation information was from the National Center for Home Food Preservation.


I chose to make apple butter for my preservation challenge. It came out amazing and was hard to preserve any of it because I wanted to eat it all! I had a lot of fun making it and ended up freezing about half of it. My camera started having a 'lens malfunction' about halfway through the process, so I don't have any pictures of the frozen product.

Here are the apples. To get the full fall experience, I made the husband take me to an orchard to get the apples (see previous post). Not sure why this next pic is sideways... but here they are cooking...

... and here's the almost done apple butter.
So, it turned out delicious. This was my first 'assignment' being a daring cook and had tons of fun making it. Hopefully, I'll have a working camera by next month.

oops.

Yeah, got into another accident... on my way to work yesterday I ran off the road and into a ditch. It could've been a lot worse- I easily could've rolled it- which is what I was trying NOT to do by not swerving back onto the road- I had the cruise on and it just happened so fast. I'm fine, just super sore (and feeling stupid) and I got a big gash on my neck from the seatbelt, but I'm sure glad I was wearing it. I figure I've used up my quota of accidents- sooooooo, enough of that.

Got Bill to take me to the apple orchard. He loved it as much as I did :-)

Here are some pics from the Jack Rabbit Run to benefit SMA.

Ryan, Diana, Zander and Lexie
Diana and me

Silly Zander :-)

The original Hausz fam with some additions

The Werner clan

true colors

Troyer's is a store near the entrance to Apple Valley and is my new obsession. It has all sorts of spices and bulk food- today, I got vanilla coffee creamer, cinnamon, ground cloves, and creamy caramel cappuccino mix. It's so much cheaper to get spices here than at a grocery store and is such a cute, clean little store!

I made a tutu for Annika's 3rd birthday and someone had to model it...

Yeah, I know I look like a fool, but look at my little Lexie's sweet little face :-)

This was at the Jack Rabbit Run-more pictures to come!