Happy Birthday Sis!

I have been thinking about several important people in my life lately and thought I would post about them today.  One of them is my sis, Kathy.  Tomorrow is her birthday. 

 Kathy is one of the world's all-around best people.  A good person and someone who would do anything to help you out.  She's always there for everyone, whether you are her mom, her kids, grandkids, neighbors or friends.  She's got your back.

She was the only blondie in our family and as she was growing up, she was really starting to believe that story about how she was adopted.....

With grandson Mitchell

When my youngest brother, Roy, was born and he was also a towhead, she finally decided that story was bunk.

With daughter, Tessa

 We have had some great experiences over the years and there are probably a few stories that should never see the light of day....but we share that special sister bond and always will.

Here we are in 1976 at my Aunt Shirley's house in Victor, Montana.  Kathy is the one in the middle.  My sister, Mitzi, is on the right.

Kathy built a beautiful dome house in Helmville, Montana.  When I say built, I mean she built it.  A lot of long days and hard work.  This is the view from her front window and a photo of her clothesline.  Does anyone use a clothesline anymore?

Jon and I went to the Helmville Rodeo on Labor Day weekend that year.  Back in those days we liked to sleep in our tent every night during the hot summer months.  We took our tent with us and slept in it over the weekend.   Helmville's elevation is about 4300' and let's just say that in morning it was frosty.   It was one of those mornings that you just wanted to stay in your sleeping bag until noon.

Our mom drove up from Victor and we all spent one evening at the Copper Queen.  If you've been to Helmville, you have probably stopped by the Copper Queen.

 Helmville is a very small, unincorporated town and the local tavern is the hub of the social life there.  There was music and dancing and everyone had a great time.

Happy Birthday, Kathy!  She's the one in the middle, right behind our mom, GrizEileen.

The same year we also met this young lady, Julie, who is now our daughter-in-law.  She's been under the weather this last week with some kind of icky virus, bronchitis bad stuff.  Drink your tea with a little brandy in it, Julie and you will feel better soon.

 

The other person I have been thinking about is Brian Long, one of our cousins and son of Kay Kiebert.  We went camping at the Wellington bridge the weekend before we drove up to Helmville.

Jon and his cousin Kay, as I have been told by both his mother and his Auntie Ruth, were trouble with a capital T when they were growing up.  In other words, they could not be trusted to be left unsupervised for more than 30 seconds.

A roasted marshmallow, kissing cousin's kiss. 

Brian and Adam - hoping for more coffee and a campfire breakfast after an evening with their mom and Uncle Jon and their antics. 

Tyler and Laura came to visit.

We waded across Lightning Creek to get a closer look at the Bear Creek slide.

When the glacier that blocked the Clark Fork and created Glacial Lake Missoula, it also created Glacial Lightning Lake.    Over thousands of years sediment accumulated in the bottom of the lake.  The Bear Creek slide uncovered some of those sediments.  We found hundreds of layers of very fine sand and gravel which is 12,000 year old lake bottom.  Visible in the photo to the right of Brian's head.

It's good thing to have these memories from a couple of weekends in 2006.  Brian left us and it was so unexpected.  We miss him and we often think of this time together around the campfire.  It was also the last time Jon and I camped at our favorite spot near the Wellington Bridge.  As usual, the roads and bridges up Lightning Creek have washed out several times since that year and there have been multiple forest fires and floods in the spring.  Fortunately for us, everything has been repaired and once again, we can drive up Lightning Creek Road.  Who knows what next winter will bring.  They say there is already snow in our forecast.

Whoa! That's huge!

It's absolutely, 100 percent, the largest dahlia Jon has ever grown.  It is so big that it makes all of the other dahlias look very small.

 It's also about 7' tall and I still don't have a very good photo of it.  I need either a ladder or a step stool so that I can get close enough to get a decent photo.   This one is a zoom-in photo and not as good as it should be.

Some of his other "small" dahlias.

 I have another project in the works.  I decided I would try to take starts from my hanging fuchsia plants for next year.  We will see what happens.  I have them on a heat pad and each has it's own little greenhouse baggie.

Yesterday I canned 8 pints of salsa and then mowed the lawn.  Today's plan is to harvest some of the winter squash and pull out the plants.

It was very cool this morning when I was out taking these photos.  Rain is in the forecast again and I'm hoping it holds off for a few hours.

Happy Birthday to my brother, Roy!   It's also his first day of retirement.   He will now have plenty of time to do all those things he loves, which include, hunting, fishing, camping, hiking, and Nebraska and Montana football.    He's the one on the left in this photo.

  

Also, Happy Birthday to daughter-in-law, Julie!   She's such a talented young woman.  She is an artist and her watercolors are so beautiful.  Plus she designs logos, greeting cards, t-shirts, and  also created so much of the artwork for the Hamilton Players Theater.   

She has more energy than Energizer Bunny.  The creativity never stops.

How do you like the snow in this photo?

The Gift.

I am thinking of this day and those ahead as a gift.

I've had a reprieve, so to speak, from my hip surgery - due to an infection.  It was scheduled for today and then yesterday - it had to be cancelled.  My doctor will not risk any type of infection and I'm a hundred percent in agreement. 

Plus, I don't think anyone who remembers the morning of Sept. 11th, would disagree that today is a gift.

Now that I have this block of time that was all scheduled for recovery and rehab, what to do?

I have made several more attempts with gluten-free baking and bread is the most difficult.  Bread without gluten does not taste like bread, but it is necessary to figure out something that will take it's place.

This is my latest attempt and even though it might look a little strange, it actually is the best one so far.  The recipe calls for teff flour.  Teff is an ancient grain the size of a poppy seed and comes from Ethiopia and Eritrea.  It comes in several colors, white, red to dark brown.  I also recently discovered that teff is grown in Idaho, in the Snake River Country.  The Teff Company 

Bread without gluten doesn't rise as much and unlike breads with wheat flours, the rise is only one time.   You also have to add xanthum gum to the flour.  It replaces the gluten and acts as a binding agent to give the bread structure.

This bread recipe is actually a very healthy one.  The teff flour is high in calcium and it also has sunflower seeds in the mix.   One more tip about GF bread - always eat it either toasted or warm.

I now know more than I ever wanted to know about flours and starches.  For instance, potato flour and potato starch are not the same thing, but tapioca flour and tapioca starch are the same thing.  My pantry now consists of brown rice flour, white rice flour, sweet rice flour, tapioca flour, potato flour, teff flour, cassavoa, cornstarch(lots of it), almond flour and coconut flour.   Yes, it is easier to just buy the one-to-one GF flour products, such as Bob's Red Mill, or Namaste, but they are all really pricey.   How pricey?  $90 to buy a 25 lb. bag of GF 1x1 flour.

I forgot to mention that sweet white rice flour is a flour made from sticky rice.  You will find it listed as an ingredient in all of the one-to-one gluten free baking flours.  I am thinking that sweet rice flour might be the secret to a good 1x1 mix and my goal is to come up with my own 1x1 GF flour mix.

I will stop griping now and tell you that I have had some really great success with other baked goods.  After two attempts I have a GF zucchini bread that tastes as good as my old recipe.  The same goes for my oatmeal cookie recipe.  The only change is to keep them either in the refrigerator or in the freezer.  I also have a  copycat GF bisquick mix that works well in zucchini patties and also for pancakes.

Enough GF stuff.  Now that I seem to have all this time on my hands, I am thinking about putting up some salsa.  I have a lot of really nice ripe tomatoes, and the peppers and onions that I need for the recipe.

I will be thinking about the gift all day.  How about you?

Bring on the coffee.

Saturday mornings after a Friday night gig move pretty slowly around here.  It takes at least four cups of coffee for anything to really happen.  I'm on number three.

I will say that after all the clouds and rain yesterday, I did not really think the band would play last night.  There was a lot of confusion about whether we would play inside or outside or play at all, but the final decision was that we were on.   This photo seemed to apply. 

The music was different with just a guitar, bass and keyboard, but as always, a lot of fun.  There was another beautiful rainbow after the rain stopped and the diners at Trinity were all taking photos. 
Plus, they seemed to enjoy the music - and that's what we like.

All in all, it was a nice end to a beautiful summer.

Retired Mountain Man has several new dahlias blooming this year.  This is one of them.   What do you think?

We have several birthdays and anniversaries to celebrate soon for both family and friends which made me think of past celebrations.

Rylee

Grandkids, Collin and Rylee

Nephew Chase

Grandson Jason

 Kiebert quartet.


The Nebraskans.

The garden continues....

Our first pears on our new tree.

Yep.  More carrots.  Vegetable soup anyone?

Dahlia row.

Fall signs.

It is Saturday and that means it's time for college football.  Retired Mountain Man and I are in a football pool which we've participated in every year for as long as I can remember.  We love a challenge and we love our football.

The games are on.  (except for those on FOX and NBC, no thanks to Directv)

It's time for that fourth cup of coffee.

Nearing the end - oh no!

It's time for the beginning of the end - of the garden.  I have harvested all of the sweet corn and it's in the freezer.  Now it's time to take out the cornstalks. That will be one of today's projects, early in the morning, before it gets too hot.  90 degree temperatures are unusual for us in the month of September.  Hello, global warming....

Yesterday I pulled most of the onions.  The Copra's grew really well this year.  They are in my bay window, covered with newspapers, to cure a bit before I hang them up using pantyhose.  I will drop the onions into the feet and tie a knot - then drop another, tie a knot and so forth.  Then I store them in my root cellar.  They will keep all winter long there and it's great to have them for soups and sauces.

My tomatoes are ripening with my favorite being a variety called Chef's Choice.  When they are ripe they turn a bright orange and they have great flavor.

I was surprised to find that I have a yellow zucchini squash plant.  My other zucchini plant has slowed down production so it's nice that the yellow one has taken off.  Retired Mountain Man and I love Zucchini Patties and I have lots of grated zucchini in the freezer to bake some zucchini bread.

My pumpkins and winter squash are ripening and will be one of the last veggies to harvest.  There will also be a final harvest of carrots and beets. 

My Begonia Corner on my deck is still going strong.  I love to look at it through my living room window.

As I was browsing through my thousands of photos I came across some from August of 2013.   Our good friend, Tim Gunn (also the drummer in the band), was building a porch addition to the front of the house.  David and family were here for several days to help with the project.

The amazing thing is that the porch looks like it has always been there, even though it's only been a few years.

Our grandson, Ben, had a great time building his own structures with the leftover scraps of wood and walking through my bean poles in the garden.

My bean poles have already been cleared from my garden this year as I am making preparations for hip replacement surgery.  I am trying to get as much done as possible because I won't be able to get out in the garden again until next spring.

Last Friday night everyone in the band thought it was our final gig, but it turns out we are on the schedule for Sept. 6th.  I am looking forward to playing one more time with some very talented musicians, Tim Gunn, Larry Guldberg, Drew Browne and Bruce Bishop.   Also, we had Mark Heisel sit in with us last week.  Mark is very versatile and plays the harmonica, the trombone or the trumpet.

This will be the last time.....