Daddy's Birthday

Daddy's birthday was about a month ago.  This shows you how organized I am, I'm just now posting the pictures.
It was a fun birthday :)

So the cake was decorated like a Canadian flag since he and mommy had just gotten back from their anniversary Canada trip.

Wow, he's OLD!

Oh more tree books.  Seriously this dude has more tree books than I know what to do with!
Now that I think of it, isn't it semi ironic that a book about trees was made out of . . . trees!?

Ok, this is what he said verbatum:

"Oooh Rosetta Stone, nice."

"Look, it's a magnet!  Opened . . . "

"Closed!"
Dad, you are a dork.

This is Sarah's reaction to Daddy's magnet show and tell.
Yeah I don't understand him either, but guess what!?  We have half of his DNA! I bet you we'll be doing the exact same thing when we're 49!

Gardening hose nozzles.  Guys really have exciting birthdays don't they?!

 HAHAHA best moment of the night!  Sometimes when a present is too big to wrap we leave it upstairs and just present the birthday person with the unwrapped gift.  Well mom had told dad that he had another present and went to go get it.  While she was coming back down, dad had started organizing all the wrapping paper mess so he didn't notice her come back downstairs.  He looked just a wee bit surprised when he turned around and there his wife is holding a pic ax in her hands right at his eye level!

We've had this bag for forever it seems.  We ALWAYS give it to dad on his birthday.  Funny thing is it applied to his 35th, 36th, 37th, 38th, 39th, 40th, 41st, 42nd . . . etc you get the point.  It's the bag that keeps on giving.

Aaaaaaand these are my sisters.
See what I have to put up with?!  We're special :)

Now,
I've saved the best for last.
We have a tradition.

(Rebecca started it.)

But every birthday, for the past four years, we've sung dad a special birthday song.
(It sounds innocent.  It's not.)

The song that started it all was the Cupid Shuffle.  We turned it into the "Old Man Shuffle."  We had dance moves and used phrases like "Do the old man shuffle, you can't see straight anymore," and "use your cane, use your cane."
Last year we sang Jordan Sparks' song "No Air" and changed it to "No Hair."
Yeeeeeah we're nice :)
But keep in mind, we're singing these songs to a man who gets a kick out of a birthday card that said "Happy Birthday!  In dog years you'd be . . . dead."  So he's sarcastic and I like to think on some level he appreciates and is proud that his daughters are cultivating his sense of humor :)

So, um, this year we were planning a big song (not as big next year's milestone birthday).  Sarah had come up with the idea last year, and we could only do this song this year (unless we waited till his 59th birthday).  Ok, I know you're waiting with baited breath!  What song could we redo that would perfectly embody the importance of this, daddy's 49th birthday?!?!?

Lady Gaga's "Edge of Glory" we turned into "Edge of 50"!!!

Gingerbread Cookies

**Warning**
**This is a public service announcement**
**These cookies are ADDICTIVE!!!**

No seriously, they are.
They disappear immediately from our house.  I think the problem is that you know they are cookies, but they don't scream "cookies" at you.  There is no chocolate, there are no M&Ms, no nuts, no frosting, they're practically healthy for you!  Lol, well I wish they were.  But I'm just trying to warn you, you will eat these for breakfast, and lunch, and snack and dinner and midnight snack and and and just be careful!

Ok.

Here's the recipe.

Don't say you weren't forewarned.

Here are the ingredients: Flour, baking soda, cinnamon, salt, ginger, allspice, cloves, pepper, vegetable shortening, butter, brown sugar, molasses, and an egg.

Start with the dry ingredients:
 

Put them all in a bowl, and mix with a whisk (this is so you don't have to sift them, because I think sifting is a waste of time, and I don't exactly own a sifter.  Honestly if anyone tells you that sifting makes your baked goods fluffier when you're just going to mix them in a mixer anyway, question their motives.  They're just trying to make you waste time!) 

 

Next, add the butter and the shortening to the mixer and beat them until they are fully mixed together and creamy.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl.

Then measure out half a cup of brown sugar (be sure to measure it in a one cup measuring device because you are too lazy/your hands are messy and you don't want to walk across the kitchen and get the half cup measuring device.  Hey, you're saving dishes.  You're welcome dad!).  Add the sugar to the creamed butter and shortening and mix it together.

Now add the egg and molasses to the sugar/butter/shortening mixture and mix together.  Now let's be clear, the recipe doesn't call for vanilla, but that doesn't mean you can't add it, right?!  I mean EVERY baked good that I make includes vanilla, since vanilla is the elixir of life.  But you don't have to add vanilla if you don't want to.  But if you were going to, now would be the time to add it.

Here's what it looks like when it's all mixed.

Now, by hand, mix in the flour.  Don't worry about getting it all incorporated with a spoon because that's hard.  It's just as easy to mix it mostly together, then dump it out onto the counter and knead it all together.

Then, divide the dough into two balls and put the balls into two bags.

Now here's my trick.  The dough needs to go into the fridge/freezer if you're impatient like me and chill.  Well it's hard to chill a ball all the way through since it's four inches thick.  If you instead flatten the dough in the bag it's going to be only half an inch thick and will chill faster.  Again I'm impatient and want to make the cookies pretty much as soon as I make the dough!

When the dough is done chilling (about an hour or so or up to a few days if you really plan ahead.  Which I do not) take it out of the freezer so you can roll it out.  Here is the other part of my trick.  Have you ever tried to roll out a chilled ball of dough?  Doesn't work too well does it.  It splits apart and you get these big cracks where you have to press the dough back together.  The beauty of flattening the dough when it was warm and then chilling it, is that the rolling out portion is almost done!  All you have to do is cut the bag off the dough.

Then roll it out flat, and then cut pretty shapes in it.  Notice I'm using flowers and bunnies and ducks because these gingerbread cookies are not just for Christmas time!

Then bake the cookies at 350 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes.

They'll come out of the oven and smell heavenly.

Now you can leave them plain, but I like to mix some powdered sugar and water and make a frosting/glaze to put on top.  It keeps the cookies moist and not stale for a lot longer.  Not that they will last that long . . . but dang it people, everything tastes better with frosting!

Here are the ingredients (recipe courtesy of Food Network.com)

 3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp cinnamon
3/4 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper (trust me you can't even taste it)
8 tbs butter
1/4 cup shortening
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
2/3 cup molasses
1 egg

Harvest

Here are just a few pictures of the harvests we get on any random day.

We were getting a few zucchini before I ripped all the plants out.  And some yellow squash too.

The cherry/lemon drop tomatoes are just everywhere!

We planted raspberry bushes this year in hopes that we'd have some fruit for next year but they started growing berries right away so I harvest a few a day.  My plan is to keep them in a plastic container in the freezer and keep adding to it daily.  By the end of the season I could thaw all the raspberries and make something yummy with it :)

Look at the color of these zebra tomatoes!  That yellow and the green and the striations are pretty cool.

And this it what happens when your garden is exploding and you can't find anything through the foliage.  The green bean on top is the size you're supposed to harvest aaaaaand the one on the bottom is the size of a few of the beans I've found this season. 

No difference in size.  None at all!

Garden Update

Since I last updated the garden, things have changed a lot.  We went through a massive heat wave in the middle of the summer where temperatures were in the upper 90s and low 100s for a few straight weeks.  I think this stunted our garden a bit.  The plants started growing aaaaand didn't do much.  They weren't growing that big and they weren't producing fruit.
























These were our pole beans:

Demon beans

These were our green beans and their beans:

Our tomato plants were sitting all nice and pretty in their wittle cages:














Here are our baby zucchinis:














Here is daddy cutting our first inaugural  zucchini lol:

Action shot!  (staged)

Smile for the camera Daddy!

Then the heat went away and BOOM!
I could no longer walk into the garden.


















I could no longer walk around in the garden.



























Aisles, what aisles?!?






































Remember those little tomato plants?  Well they have now grow over their cages and over and down on top of the zucchinis!


















Side Note:

Let us stop for a moment and acknowledge the fact that I finally was able to grow a big tomato!  For ever dad has only wanted to grow little cherry tomatoes, mainly because he eats them like candy.  Walk through the kitchen to the laundry room, pop a tomato or two.  Walk from the laundry room through the kitchen, pop a tomato.  Stand in the kitchen and watch as Sarah and I cook dinner, pop, pop, pop.  He just can't pop big tomatoes as easily into his mouth.  So we've never grown large tomatoes, but I'm TIRED of cherry tomatoes.  Sure it's nice to go into the garden and harvest fifty million but they're so easy!  You plop the plants in the ground, water them, and voila, tomatoes.  It's not like the big tomatoes are taken care of any differently, but I feel like I've accomplished more since the big tomato is about 40 times larger than the little cherry tomatoes :)

I shall call him mongo.

Ok, back on the subject of the garden.  Well it grew and grew and grew, but to my frustration we weren't getting that many vegetables.  I blame the heat, I think it stunted the plants in their initial fruit producing stages.

I'd also like to admit that I'm not the most . . . um . . . accepting person when it comes to production.  My motto: if you're gonna stay, you're gonna work.  And the beans were not working.  Remember those pole beans barely brushing the bottom of the poles?  Well they grew taller than the 6' poles, tall enough to fall over, after which they started to twine around the tomatoes and the sunflowers and anything within reach, which created quite the maze.  Not only did they grow and grow and grow, but they produce one dang bean, not one and I gave them MONTHS to come up to scratch.  Months I tell yeah!

So I ripped them out.

And I ripped out the zucchinis because they had vine bores and leaf mold.

Let me tell you this REALLY opened up the garden and I could breath again.

















Don't worry, it's only August and won't get really cold for another two months.  So . . .

I planted them again!

Here are the baby zucchinis sprouting:














And here are the baby beans (above which I PROMISE to build a trellis so they can actually grow tall and not fall over):














The tomatoes are still growing big and strong.














And they are still massive and falling over, but I can live with this.
I only have to army crawl underneath the plants to rescue the ripe tomatoes through spider webs and the like.  No biggy. Cough cough.

Overgrown tomatoes

So there you have it folks, the last few months of the garden.  It started at the beginning and has now come full circle!