BUSY TIMES ~~ IT'S COOKING TIME! ~~ GUEST PHOTOGRAPHER SHOT ~~ FAMILY PICTURES ~~ PARTING SHOT

BUSY TIMES

For the past several weeks, Linda and I have been having a lot of work done around our house. We figure we might as well have all this done while we are still alive and able! When we got back from our trip back East, we arranged to have the exterior of our house painted. Over the past 12 years since we moved here, the extreme weather conditions in Yakima in the Summer and Winter have taken their toll on the paint. So, for a couple of weeks we had strangers coming and going. Needless to say, little Summer Girl was a bit upset with all the activity happening around her house (no one asked her permission!). We managed to match the color of the paint perfectly, and it now looks so bright and new!  It was definitely worth all the hassle. Below is our front porch, where we like to have our drinkiepoo when the weather is nice. We will have to wait for Spring now, since the weather here has turned too cold to sit outside.

When we made our trip to St. Augustine back in June, we visited a pottery and ceramics shop that Linda and I had gone to way back in the early 2000's. Back then, we had bought a ceramic number sign for our house in Lumberton. When we went in June, we found that same shop and got a number sign for this house. After the painting was done, we finally were able to put it up and it looks great!

During this time, I decided to call our electrician and have a few things done that have been on our list for years. One of them was to install new lights on each side of the garage. We never turned the old ones on because the bulbs kept burning out due to water leaking in the fixture. Above is a picture of the new lights we had installed and we just love them! The design mirrors the grid on our front porch window.

I also had a new ceiling fan installed in the master bedroom. I think I must have burned out the old fan because it only had one speed, and that was slow. It barely moved the air around, and in the summertime that just wasn't cutting it. Here's the new fan below...another thing we will have to wait until better weather to use!

I also got another electrical outlet installed on the back porch. Now I can use my smoker or my dehydrator and not have to unplug Summer Girl's heated pad. And another good thing is I can position my smoker closer to the outside of the porch and hopefully the smoke will flow out that way. This is something I can use now, and I will probably be smoking something soon.


IT'S COOKING TIME!

I realize I have been remiss in posting any recipes or cooking adventures lately. Now that things have calmed down around here, I have gotten back into my favorite pastime, cooking. One of my new obsessions in the cooking arena is to make yogurt. I have made homemade yogurt before, but it was the old-fashioned boiled method and it was a pain in the butt. This time I am making yogurt with my Instant Pot Duo using the Cold-Start Method, and it is so easy! All you do is dump in your milk, your starter, and any additional flavorings you might want to add (like creamer or sweetened condensed milk), stir it around and push a few buttons, and then sit back and wait for it to make yogurt. I incubate mine for 10 hours, and then strain it in the refrigerator overnight. I wind up with the best-tasting yogurt ever! I like to make zero-fat Greek style yogurt, and then I can add in fruit or jam or whatever I like when I serve it. If any of you have an Instant Pot with the Yogurt button, I encourage you to try making homemade yogurt. Here's a link to the instructions on how to do this on the website Freida Loves Bread (<---link).

Another thing that this wondrous invention does is to proof bread dough. You can only do this if you, once again, have the Yogurt button on your Instant Pot. I am so glad I broke down and got a 6-quart Duo Instant Pot, because my 3-quart Lux model does not have the Yogurt button. Here is a picture of a loaf of delicious bread that I proofed in my Instant Pot. The link to the recipe that I used from the Tidbits website is here (<---link).

One of the best bread recipes I have ever made

We had our friend Linda H. (you know, Summer Girl's BFF) over for dinner last week to celebrate her birthday, which was the previous week. Since her absolute favorite thing is chocolate, I decided to bake her a cake. This was only the second "made-from-scratch" layer cake that I had ever made. The other one was way back when we lived in Lumberton and I made a Hummingbird Cake for Linda's birthday. Anyway, this one was going to be two layers of chocolate cake with a chocolate buttercream icing. It took me all morning and I dirtied just about everything in the kitchen, but I got it done and the result was amazing! I won't be going on the Great British Baking Show by any means, but I still think I did a pretty good job. Here's a link to the recipe for the cake on the website Food 52 (<--link), and for the buttercream icing on the website Just a Taste (<---link).

Ummmm!

It was yummy!

GUEST PHOTOGRAPHER SHOT

The sky here is Yakima is pretty beautiful in the mornings. We don't live where we can get really good pictures of it because of there being so many houses and trees around us. However, Linda was able to get some excellent pictures the other morning, so I decided to feature one of them in the blog. Good job, honey!

Is that a UFO?

FAMILY PICTURES

From time to time we get pictures sent to us from different family members, both two-legged and four-legged. Here's a gallery of photos that we recently received.

Adorable little Mimi, our "niece"

Mr. T, (aka Tangelo), our "nephew"

Mimi in one of her Halloween outfits

Two beauties...Emily and our
grand-kitty Tabby (Tabitha)

PARTING SHOT

I got several pictures of Summer Girl sitting outside in the sun, and Google Photos was kind enough to put it into a little movie for me. I believe this was the most she moved all day!

That's all for this week, join us again next week for more from the Southerner in the Northwest!