A Little Bit of This and A Little Bit of That!!!

Hi there everyone. Hope you are enjoying these fall days. They are going by way too fast. Been a little busy at this end. Winterizing our little place. Gathered in all my tomatoes and cut the bushes down. Put my ceramic creatures away in the shed and cleaned the garage so I would have more space for the outside garden furniture. I guess in the next few days I should empty the water fountain (sniff and sigh). Then rake the leaves into the street and cut down all the flowers....a sure sign that "fall is over and winter is coming". Brought some of my plants in from outside...my hibiscus, that has been blooming like crazy and JP brought in the begonia plant today.

Our roof still has not been fixed. The scaffold was put up on Monday....but it's been raining everyday just about. The roofer said he would not open the roof till the weather was better. That might be next week. My life seems so un-organized what with this roof. Be glad when it's finished and the ceiling no longer leaks.

Been busy cooking. This is my last batch of potstickers. I cooked the meat first (this time) then placed the meat mixture on wonton skins. I think I will use the wonton's the next time I do these....and most likely cook the meat before stuffing the dumplings. Seemed to work out better.

JP came home with 2 large cabbages Tuesday night, they both measure about 10x10....pretty large!!!. So Wednesday I made sauerkraut, this was my first attempt....I think it will turn out pretty good and I can hardly wait to try some along with a pork roast. Here is the site I went to .

The 1st jar in the above picture is day one......this same jar in this picture is day two. Can you see how much more liquid there is in the jar....if the cabbage stays under water we will be good to go and the kraut should be good. I probably will tap it down again tonight....it is smelling very sauerkrauty.

Here is a picture of the other cabbage......oh I have some plans for this one. Stuffed cabbage, cabbage, tomatoes and bacon. cabbage and sausage, cole slaw....yeah and probably freeze some cabbage which I will use in soups and stuff. I went to Pinterest and typed in "cabbage recipes" oh my goodness so many ideas for cabbage. My all time favorite though is stuffed cabbage.....yummy. Reminds me of my step-grandmother, her stuffed cabbages which were awesome, were called "ho-lip-she's" (I am sure that is not how they are spelt, and probably have a different name depending on the country) Gram's came from the Ukraine but called them by their polish name.

Here is a picture of both the cabbage and sauerkraut.....yep it's been a busy week with still more to come.

You all have a great rest of the week. I will let you know how the sauerkraut is going in about 7-10 days, when it should be done fermenting.

See you in the next blog and keep looking up. Cheers ~ Louise

Chinese Dumplings or Potstickers

Hi there everyone. Aren't  you just loving this wonderful Fall....Indian Summer is always so beautiful. I still have tomatoes on the vines, so I am hoping these next few days they will ripen. Heirlooms seem to take longer for some reason. Picked a few tomatoes tonight, maybe I will put them in a bag and see if they turn red faster.

Well, today I made some Chinese Dumplings. Tina from www.kittykatkards.blogspot.com  gave me the recipe as she is pretty good at making them, they sounded so good, I thought I might like to try my hand at it. You can find the recipe here (sorry about the sideways picture, I wanted to get everything in one picture but forgot to turn it the right way before downloading onto this blog). When you go to the recipe, go to the second section, that will be the recipe that I followed.

In the top picture is the dough, mixed and cut in pieces....2 cups of flour and 1 cup hot water, mixed together and knead then roll into 3" circles. You can see in the top part of the picture I have the filling all mixed together. Ground pork, bok choy, onion, cornstarch, sesame oil, pepper and salt and yes, 1 tablespoon of wine.

In this picture I am rolling out the dough and spooning the filling on the dough and pinching it together on the ends.

Here is a plate of dumplings all ready made....I might have gotten about 35-40 dumplings made. JP ate about 12 of them for lunch....there's no telling how many I ate...gosh they were soooooo goooood!!!

Here they are frying up in the pan, then I added a cup of hot water and let them boil till the water evaporated. The sauce was just low sodium soy sauce and sesame oil....mmmm tasted so good.

This might be the end of the first batch and the beginning of the second batch, as you can see I have some ready to fry up.



Here is JP enjoying his little lunch....he even commented on how the filling even smelled good....he likes when I try something new....this might make it on the dinner table a couple more times. Guess I will have to find out how many calories each dumpling has. Ummmm, do I really want to know???

 

 

Well you have a great week and enjoy the beautiful weather we are having. Cheers ~ Louise