Pumpkin Beer Bread

A kind friend put together and gave us this kit for making a loaf of Pumpkin Beer Bread.

I was a little apprehensive about pouring out what appeared to be a perfectly good beer just to make bread.

The end result was worth it. I really never bake and don’t know what is considered a large bread pan. All we had is what I assume is a little bread pan so I split the batter and made two loaves. I maybe could have gotten by with most or all of the batter in the one pan. So I don’t know if this is how it should look or not but I don’t really care because it sure tastes good. Thanks Stephanie.

Notes: I substituted Earth Balance for the butter. I used an electric hand mixer to mix the batter. Possibly my first time using one I can’t recall. Continue reading “Pumpkin Beer Bread”

Old Bus Photo

I collect most anything related to my hometown history but the times I find anything are far and few in-between because there just isn’t much. I did recently find this 8×10 photo at an antique store that shows an advertisement for a local car lot on a near-by cities municipal bus. I’m guessing it’s mid-60s.

I looked through our stash of frames, found one that fit and hung it at the bottom of the basement stairs.

Family Rocking Chair

This old rocking chair belonged to my Father-in-law, before that his Father and before that his Father. The chair was worn and my Father-in-law set out to have it refinished. He had someone do the wood but didn’t find anyone to do the caning. For his birthday one year we had a local guy re-cane it (rope actually I believe) for him. My Father-in-law passed several years ago and we were recently given the chair by my Mother-in-law.
It’s relatively small for a rocker and my Father-in-law was a big man but he would sit in it every morning to put his shoes on.

Garden Bench

I just come across these photos of garden benches I made a few years ago. They are a simple design I come up with on the fly. I made 2, one for ourselves and one for our Daughter. Ours is the painted one which eventually started to rot and also needed to be moved from its location so we just got rid of it. Our Daughter gave hers to a neighbor when she moved and no longer had a place for it.

Mandoline Slicer

I received a mandoline slicer for Christmas. Tonight I tried to make crinkle cut sweet potato chips. Probably not the best choice for the first time using the slicer. I cut them to thick so they were a little too meaty after baking to be chips.

Pictured above, crinkle cut sweet potato chips, carrots cooked with maple syrup and spaghetti squash. Not really what I would choose to make but I haven’t been grocery shopping in a while and that’s about all we had.

Buttered Popcorn Chocolate Chip Cookies

We had these at Christmas and noe one was too excited about them.
Pictured above, ours don’t look nearly as nice as those in the recipe.
The recipe is not vegan but can be substituting the butter with a vegetable based spread, the egg with a flax seed egg and non buttered natural microwave popcorn.
Recipe here.