Feeling Saucy!

Most of you know that I have been an Italian in training for almost 7 years now...wow time flies!  Josh's Dad is an Italian immigrant and brought with him some amazing recipes.  I have spent many years trying to perfect his pizza and I'm getting very close (or Josh just likes to humor me).  I have made his sauce twice before with little success getting it to taste just right.   

We have a huge garden going this year and had a large picking of tomatoes so I knew it was sauce time.  I decided not to try to replicate Gaetano's sauce and instead take my own path.  I found a recipe online and decided to make my own tweaks to it.  The first hurdle was seeding and dicing the tomatoes, all 42 of them.  You probably wouldn't have to seed them but I hate tomato seeds!

Fresh basil from the garden along with our tomatoes!

Seed, seed, seed all day long...

The final product, worth every second!

Time for chopping onions...1/2 an onion in and I was dying so I had to equip myself with an onion gas mask!

  Now for the big show!  I coated the bottom of my deep soup pot with EVOO and sauteed my onions until they were translucent then added my garlic.

Next add in about a cup to cup and a half of red wine.  This wine was left from a gift we got from Chris and Kelly.  I added most of what was left of the bottle, probably a little more than a cup and a half, but you can't have too much of a good thing :)  I saved the last few swigs for the chef! (insert Julia Childs voice here)

Simmer the wine till reduced by about half and then dump in all the rest of the ingredients and simmer for 2 hours.

I had some extra help in the kitchen from my assistant.  Sorry she is naked but we are potty training so it goes with the territory.  At least I made her sit on a kitchen towel!  LOL!!

After two hours of glorious smells and a few taste tests from me it was done, I'm pretty happy thought I think it is a little sweet.  I whizzed it with my immersion blender a few times to smooth it out a little.  I may reduce the brown sugar to 3 tablespoons next time.  It made me enough for 3 large servings, two of which I froze in ziploc bags. 

Sweet Tomato and Basil Sauce


Ingredients (add in this order):
1/4 Cup Olive Oil
1/4 Cup Minced Garlic
2 Large Onions, Minced
1 Cup Red Wine
3 Tablespoons Italian Seasoning
4 Tablespoons of brown sugar
5 Lbs of tomatoes seeded and diced (or three cans diced tomatoes and 3 cans tomato sauce)
1 Cup Chopped Fresh Basil

Enjoy!!!

The Best Zucchini Bread Ever!

I'm channeling my cousin Amanda Metternich today and her blog Whistle While you Whisk.  Since she is spending her summer scooping Elephant poo rather than cooking/baking I had to post this in her honor : )

I was given some zucchini from Larry Kraft's garden and wanted to make some bread with them.  I did some searching on allrecipes.com and found this recipe.  After reading some of the reviews I decided to make a few tweaks to the recipe.  I substituted the white sugar for brown and cut it down to 1 cup and added 1/2 cup of honey.  I also added an additional cup of zucchini.

My Mama taught me to sift my ingredients onto a paper plate (who wants to wash another bowl!)

When you combine the ingredients it resembles cookie batter but once the zucchini is added it thins out a bit from the moisture

This produced the most moist and sweet bread I have had in a while...yummy!

Here is my updated recipe.  Enjoy!!  I baked mine for 50 mins and it was perfect!!   

Ingredients

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup honey
• 3 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 3 cups grated zucchini
• 1 cup chopped walnuts (I didn't add these)

Directions

1. Grease and flour two 8 x 4 inch pans. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F.
2. Sift flour, salt, baking powder, soda, and cinnamon together in a bowl.
3. Beat eggs, oil, vanilla, and sugar together in a large bowl. Add sifted ingredients to the creamed mixture, and beat well. Stir in zucchini and nuts until well combined. Pour batter into prepared pans.
4. Bake for 40 to 60 minutes, or until tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in pan on rack for 20 minutes. Remove bread from pan, and completely cool.

The Garden!

We have started a pretty large garden this year. It has definitely been a learning experience. I have too much of some things and not enough of others and some things I totally forgot. We have tomatoes, cucumber, spaghetti squash and basil at the moment. I wish I would have done less squash and put some zucchini in, but there is always next year. Olivia loves to go to the garden and count the ponatoes (tomatoes). I did catch her pick a small squash today and throw it and say "Football!" The joys of country life are growing on her fast!

Father's Day!

We decided to have our first gathering at the house for our family for Father's Day. Both sets of our parents came over and we ate like pigs! The meal turned out awesome (if I do say so myself) and was followed by swimming in the baby pool for Olivia and a food and US Open induced coma for Josh and my Dad. once everyone had left we decided to take a Gator ride down to the creek to play. Olivia loves riding on the Gator and splashing in the water at the creek. We are so lucky to have all this at our fingertips! I hope Josh enjoyed his first Father's Day at the farm. I'm so lucky to have him as my Husband and partner in this journey!

Demo, Demo and More Demo!

Demo of wall in dining room

Demo wall where sliding glass door is now in dining room

Removing the wall between the living and dining room

Widening the kitchen opening

Getting ready to demo the old stairs (outside wall of the old stairs)

Hole cut into the roof for the dormer that holds the kids bathroom

Opening the wall between living and dining room (opposite side view)

Wall is almost gone

The Amazing Floating House

So our first order of business was to fix the foundation. It was constructed in 1894 from limestone and the mortar in between the stones could now be crumbled with your fingers. The front part of the house was the worst and was pretty much sitting on the ground (hence the massive amounts of termite damage). They brought in huge jacks and lifted the house and tore out the old and prepared for the new. They also added a french drain system to keep water out of the basement.  You want to see some hard work, this was it! These guys busted their butts dragging rock and mud out of our basement by hand and worked in 100 degree heat day in and day out. We had some cracking in our plaster from the raising of the house but not too bad for everything they did. The new foundation and steel beams have given us much more piece of mind. The basement is also much drier than it once was, but not totally. Here are the pics of the process.

The old foundation removed

Our high tech security system we had...plywood!

Yep, that is daylight you are seeing.  We were home to squirrels and a cat for a while : )

These are the jacks that were holding the house up

The stones from the old foundation, we are using them to make a sidewalk

New concrete blocks going in

Some of the cracking we had in our bedroom

That was then...This is now

I don't even know where to start.  Last April Grandpa and Grandma decided it was time to leave the farm.  We are so blessed that they have left the farm to us, knowing how much it means to them.  Grandpa was born there and lived there for 82 years!  I'm so excited for Olivia to grow up enjoying the same things I loved as a child.  Catching baby frogs in spring, mushroom hunting, fishing...the list goes on and on. 

The house and land are beautiful but we knew the house needed repairs and we wanted to add some things to make it perfect for us.  We wanted to add an attached garage, bedroom and laundry on the main floor.  We needed to repair the 118 year old foundation and also some termite damage (we had no idea how much).  Here is the house on day one. 

We started demolition and the foundation work in August and fell down the rabbit hole shortly thereafter.  We thought we would be in the house by Christmas 2011, little did we know!  After an exhausting year of work we are so excited to be where we are today.

I think I'm going to break the rehab down by rooms so this terribly slow country Internet connection doesn't drive me to drinking!  Hang with me and enjoy the ride.