Clam Chowder

After my Dad's 50th Birthday party we had half a garbage can full of clams on ice that needed to be cooked up immediately. So Sunday Mom and I spend over three hours cooking and shelling clams. Just so that yesterday, I could spend practically my entire day making chowder. Of course my OCD got the better of me and I spent a lot of my time cutting up the clams by hand... no yucky green stuff in my chowder! And as much as I don't like clams... I LOVE clam chowder. But I will have you know... saving all that clammy smelling broth isn't worth the time and effort. Save a few cups of it if you plan on making a ton of it... but no more than that. The recipe I used called for two and a half cups of clam broth... that batch came out very very clammy. The next one I did I only used a cup of clam broth, followed by a cup and a half of water, and guess what... it was still REALLY clammy! I was so sad. I made three kinds/batches... the first was clam and corn chowder, the second was veggie clam chowder (I used peas, corn and two cups of carrots from our garden), and the final was your regular clam chowder. (All "New England" clam chowder by the way... 'cause that's really the only way to have a proper chowder after all!)
And, knowing me, I had to make bread bowls! :-D I found a nice hard roll recipe in one of moms falling apart ancient cook books. They came out well except that once again the dough didn't rise. No more mixing wheat and white flour for me! *sigh* Oh well. So what was suppose to make two dozen rolls instead made four small bread bowls. But they still tasted yummy and held the soup in well. So all in all, it wasn't a major loss.
So... now I have a ton of clam chowder in the freezer, and I'm so sick of clams that I don't want to eat any of it. lol.
Next up on my list of cooking adventures: vegetable soup! :)

I LOVE Sunflowers...

I thought I'd share some of my lovely sunflowers with you all. Below is a selection of the sunflowers I grew this year... there are a ton of different colours and shapes and sizes...

Labor Day Weekend

Welcome to the Lake...

We spent some time fishing... Dad and Mom were the only one's to catch fish... they kept teasing me... I didn't catch a thing... :(

Dad and his huge bass

Mom and her pretty good sized bass

Then I decided I wanted to go tubing. I mean come on... I had to test out the power of the new boat. After going around for a while I got sick of the spray in my face, so I had dad add on an extra length of rope. It was a little better, but I still got massive amounts of spray in my face. I couldn't open my eyes at all. That's the problem with big motors, they kick off one heck of a rooster tail. lol.

I just hopped into the tube


Here we go...
And here's a video so you can watch the hilarity :)

Isn't that hilarious?

And I love my Aunt Mare's flowers... aren't these just beautiful...(PS. Yes Sarah, you were right... they're Glads... Gladiolas)


Hope everyone else is having a great start to school and that you enjoyed your Labor Day weekend, because you never know when you're going to get time off to breathe.

Horses and Hay

Being the country girl that I am I'm sure everyone would assume that I've "done hay" before. But, to my dismay, all I have ever done is unload the hay wagons. That is, until the other day. As I went up to ride horses with my Aunt Mare and 'tis the season to be rushing to get hay in I had the opportunity to help Uncle Randy and Aunt Mare with hay. I got to hop in the hay wagon and stack bales in the hay wagon as the baler shoots bales of hay at us. I don't know if any of you have ever seen a baler in action but it's really quite amazing. It combs the hay up with it's little teeth and ties the rope around the hay as it packs it into flakes and bales and then it shoots it out the back into the wagon. And the funny part is that when it's about to shoot out a bale it sounds like some sort of monster growling at you. So I decided that it looks like a dragon, a chinese dragon to be more specific, it looks like it has a face and the whole nine yards. At one point I was standing on top of two bails of hay pressure fitting myself between the hay behind me and the wooden frame in front of me, while I caught bails as they flew out of the feeder and threw them on top of the already six bail high stack of hay behind me. When I looked up I saw my Uncle Randy laughing at me as I catch the bails and try flinging them over my head. We finally stopped when I fell off the hay wagon because a bail toppled me over. It was very amusing. Luckily Uncle Randy was going slow and keeping an eye on me and stopped when I "hopped" off the wagon. lol. All in all it was a good couple of days. My shoulders are a little sore though. :-D