It's the Holiday Season, Merry Christmas!

One week til Christmas. I do have some Christmas presents to purchase, yet. But, I do want to talk about events over the last few weeks. I see that it has been several weeks since my last post, as usual, that is because I have to remember to download photos off of my camera so that I can include them in my posts. Without pictures, the posts can be pretty hard to swallow.


1969 Jaguar XKE, 2+2 with factory air and manual 4 speed transmission.

 Yes, it is mine. Sort of. Actually, the bank owns it for right now. I bought it last week. It has 19,000 miles on the odometer. Everything works. It's kind of like sitting in a fighter jet plane. Very comfortable. I plan to drive it on a regular basis. You can actually get two child car seats in the back seat (proved it last Sunday). They say it will get up to 25 miles per gallon on the highway.

A really cool fall morning on the Pearson farm.  This is one of the many pleasures we enjoy from being out here in the country.

Now that the weather is cooling off, it is time to get the old wood cookstove fired up again.

Starts off with a Wal-Mart bag of apples from a friend at church, Beth Williamson.  The evaporated milk was for the pumpkin pies. The bowl on the floor is to catch the peels as they come off of the apple peeler.

Thank the Lord, my old loose-leaf Betty Crocker cookbook has a recipe for deep-dish apple pie.

Next, comes in an antique apple peeler.  It took me a couple of apples to get the hang of it, but actually works great.  It has one knife that pushes the peel off as you crank, another one that takes the peel off from around the stem end, and then when it finishes, it has a "pusher" that pushes the peeled apple off of the holder.  Pretty cool, huh?

15 tart apples and a couple hours of peeling, cutting, trimming and you have the apples for a deep dish apple pie.



Once the apples are peeled, I cut them and core them with a (modern) apple corer and then trim off the brown spots and cut them up into small bits.  Now, I have apples for pie and a bowl full of peels, cores, stems and trimmings.  Wait a minute!  Can't I make apple jelly from that?!

 Yes, I can! Of course, now I have to go way back to my old Searchlight cookbook from the 1800s for a recipe for apple jelly. It did jell, but a bit too soft. More like apple syrup, actually. But, still quite good. Better than just throwing it all out. After I got done with making the jelly the pigs got it, anyway. So, both of



It actually started out on the electric stove (old habits die hard) and then it occurred to me that I have the wood stove going for the pies, why not cook the apples there?  Duh!

 us got to benefit from it. Nothing wasted.



One tasty deep-dish apple pie.

 Once I had the apple pie in the cookstove oven I turned my attention to the pumpkin pies. I have enough pumpkin from our Jack-o-lanterns to do several pies, but I limited myself to just 3. Be reasonable!



One apple pie and 3 pumpkin pies. Again, the electric stove comes in handy when you need a heat-proof spot to cool pies.

 Again, as I have posted in the past, I got a great tip from my fellow wood cookstove buff, Jim, at http://woodcookstovecooking.blogspot.com/. He gave me the idea when he was trying to get the excess water out of tomatoes, trying to make homemade ketchup. After the pumpkin is cooked and scraped off of the skin I put it into a jelly bag (old T-shirt) and let it drain overnight. Then I squeeze as much water out of the jelly bag as I can with my hands. The result is much drier and makes for a much better pie (more stuff, less water). I like it and the pies taste much better, too. I just mush it up with my hands rather than running it through the food processor. Too much work. Hands are cheap and easy, and it gives the pie better texture (more tooth).



Thanksgiving dinner at grandma and grandpa's house.  From right to left, my wife, Brenda, on the far right, then Maddie (foster child), then sons Adam and Andrew.