What Matters Most

The first sign of snow:

Fall crochet project:

Around my house:

Honeycrisp apples – the. best. apples. ever.

My pumpkin harvest!

Yup.  Fall is here!

This week I harvested a lot of tomatoes, so yesterday I decided to make some pasta sauce.

To get the tomatoes ready for cooking, I had to blanch them, dunk them in ice water, peel the skins, and remove the seeds.  This is quite a long process, especially with the cherry tomatoes, but I really love it.  I woke up yesterday morning so excited to devote my day to this.  I love spending Saturday afternoons in my sunny kitchen doing something domestic.  It makes me happy inside.

Here’s my kitchen all set up for the process.  It takes a lot of bowls.  For most of the year I wonder why I have so many bowls and consider downsizing my collection, but when this time of year comes around, I’m glad I have so many of them.

First I blanched the tomatoes (submerge in simmering water for 30 seconds to a minute, just until the skin splits) and dunked them in ice water.

After all of the tomatoes were blanched, it was time to remove the skins and seeds.  I moved over to the kitchen table to sit down for this part because I knew it would take quite a long time.  To make the process more fun, I watched a couple episodes of Eureka (one of my favorite shows) on my laptop while I did this.  I think it took 1 1/2 to 2 hours.  Many of the cherry tomato skins didn’t split when I blanched them, so removing the skins was more time consuming.  Still, though, it was quite fun and relaxing.

Here are the tomatoes all ready to cook.  8 cups total.

Next I gathered the rest of the ingredients for the sauce.  I picked a few sprigs of basil from the garden and got an onion from the garage that I had picked a few weeks ago.

I chopped the basil and onion up and added them to the tomatoes in the crock pot.  I love that all of these things came from my garden!

Next I added some canned tomato sauce and seasonings and let it cook for several hours.  It was just about ready when I came back from the General Relief Society Meeting (which was a wonderful meeting.  I’m glad I went!)

After letting the sauce cool a bit, I put it into bags and popped them in the freezer.

I ended up with 7 cups of sauce.  That doesn’t seem like much considering how much time I put into it, but the sauce is sooo good and I really enjoy the process.

Now whenever I need some pasta sauce I can pull some of this homemade goodness out of my freezer instead of reaching for jar of store-bought sauce from my pantry.  And that makes me happy inside.

Emily’s Pasta Sauce

Ingredients (I didn’t really measure anything so amounts are approximate)

8 C tomatoes, blanched, skins and seeds removed

10 oz canned tomato sauce

1/2 C onion, minced

2-3 cloves of garlic, minced

1-2 T basil, chopped

1/2 t italian seasoning

1 t salt

sugar to taste

dash of red pepper flakes

Combine all ingredients in a crock pot.  Cook on medium for about 6 hours.  Use sauce in spaghetti or any other recipe that calls for pasta sauce.  I like to use it in this bow tie lasagna.

Today for dessert I made raspberry trifle.  Here’s the recipe (from Everyday Food, with my notes added in italics).

Grand Raspberry Trifle

Makes 10  ::  Prep Time: 20 minutes  ::   Total Time: 20 minutes  (today I made 1/3 of the recipe for just Doug and me)

Ingredients

1/2 C plus 2 T sugar

1/4 C water

1/4 C fresh lemon juice

1 C seedless raspberry jam

4 C raspberries

2 C heavy cream (I usually use regular whipping cream)

1 1/2 pounds of pound cake (I used angel food cake that I had in the freezer)

Directions

1. In a small saucepan, bring 1/2 cup sugar, 1/4 cup water, and lemon juice to a boil, stirring to dissolve sugar, 1 to 2 minutes. Let cool.
2. In a small bowl, combine jam with 3 cups raspberries, mashing slightly.
3. In a large bowl, whip cream and 2 tablespoons sugar to stiff peaks.  (Today I didn’t have any whipping cream so I just used canned whipped cream.  It didn’t hold up as well as freshly whipped cream, but it still worked.)
4. Slice pound cake 3/4 inch thick; brush both sides of slices with lemon syrup. (I cut the cake into bite sized pieces, put them into a bowl, drizzle with syrup and lightly toss.)
5. Fit 1/3 of slices snugly in the bottom of a 4-quart trifle dish or other glass bowl, trimming edges if necessary. Gently spread top of layer with 1/3 of raspberry mixture, and then 1/3 of whipped cream. Repeat to make two more layers; garnish with remaining cup raspberries. Refrigerate until ready to serve, up to 24 hours.

I started working on a Christmas quilt in December with the hopes to have it done by next Christmas. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to work on much because I had surgery on my hand in January. The recovery has been long and hard, but my hand is starting to feel better and better. So I finally decided it was time to try quilting again. I was happy and surprised to find that it didn’t bother my hand much at all. In the last 6 months I have forgotten how much I love to sew and knit and crochet. I’m so happy to be able to pick all of it up again!

 I get a lot of joy and satisfaction out of creating things, especially when they require a lot of hard work and patience.  Here’s a little sampling of things I’ve made.

I am so proud of myself for making this scarf!  It took a lot of learning and patience to learn this pattern, but it was so worth it.

I’ve made a few afghans before, but I’ve never made one for myself.  I finally decided to splurge and make one for myself.  It was a pretty quick project because the yarn is incredibly chunky.  And it is sooooo soft.

I’ve always wanted to try the entrelac knitting technique.  It seemed so complicated to make a whole project out of it, so I just made a swatch for practice.  It’s a little wonky, but pretty good for a first try.  I think I’ll want to make something using this technique someday.

These dishcloths were so addicting.  I made these about a year ago and am still using them.  Definitely not as pretty anymore, though.  Maybe I should make some more…

I loved making this wreath for Valentine’s Day.  It was so time consuming, but I loved every minute of it.  Maybe I’ll do a wreath for Christmas next.

Finally, the last installment of our trip to Yellowstone last year (this is really only for my record keeping!)

We spent the morning in Mammoth hiking around to see all the hot springs.

Palette Spring – my favorite thing in Mammoth.

Canary Spring

The Main Terrace

Orange Spring Mound

Then we headed south and stopped to eat our lunch at Sheepeater Cliff.

Then took a look at Firehole Falls.

Then we stopped at the fountain paint pots.  I love this little area!

Steam from the geysers at the fountain paint pots

Fountain geyser

Clepsydra geyser

Spasm and Clepsydra geysers

On our way to the Firehole lake drive, we were stopped for half an hour by all the bison on the road – a typical Yellowstone experience.

White dome geyser going off in the background.

Hot Lake – so beautiful.

Well, that officially ends our trip to Grand Teton and Yellowstone.  And it only took nine months to do it!

For years I’ve been trying to find a good way to store and share images of the things I love that I’ve found on the internet.  After trying a few different things (and not quite liking them), I’ve found one that I really, really love – Pinterest.  It’s a great way to create visual collections of the the things you love.  Basically, you create “boards” and “pin” images to those boards.  You can also follow other people’s boards to find even more inspiriation.  If you’d like to check out my pinboards, you can find me here.  And if you join Pinterest (or are already on Pinterest), I’d love to see what inspires you.

I’m determined to finish posting about our vacation last October, just so I have a record of it.  So, here’s day 3 of our journey.

We spent most of the day around Old Faithful.  We got to see it go off a few times while we took a hike on the boardwalk trail around the area.  There are lots of geysers and pools around Old Faithful.  Going on this boardwalk trail was probably my favorite part of the whole trip.  Some highlights from the boardwalk trail:

Old Faithful – I never get tired of watching it.

Castle Geyser – so beautiful!

Chromatic Pool

Grotto Geyser – this one made some interesting roaring noises.

Morning Glory Pool – for some reason, over the decades people have been throwing junk into this pool.  A crew has to clean it out every year.  The colors used to be so much more vibrant.  It is still beautiful, but it’s so sad that people have been ruining it over the years.

Anemone Geyser – we saw this one go off a few times.  It erupts every 7-10 minutes.

Firehole River

After the long hike we ate lunch out on the balcony at the Old Faithful Inn.

We spent the late afternoon and evening making our way up to Mammoth.  We stopped at several places along the way.

Dragon’s Mouth Spring – I love this little spring.  It really does sound like a dragon.  Such a deep and load roar!

Even though the day was almost over and we were pretty tired, we decided to hike Uncle Tom’s Trail to see the Lower Falls.

The trail drops over 500 feet into the canyon.  At first the trail is paved and very steep, with many switchbacks.  Then there are 300 steep stairs to get to the end of the trail where you can see the lower falls.  It was pretty strenuous and we had to stop several times to catch our breaths, but it was so worth it.

The lower falls – wow.

While we were in Yellowstone there were a couple fires burning thousands of acres of forests.  On our way to Mammoth we saw one of the fires.  We also saw a lot of land that was burned the week before.

We took a few breaks from our long drive to see the Yellowstone River.  It was almost dark, but even then it was still so majestic.  At one of the lookout points there was a short trail that we followed for a little ways until we ran into some antelope, which – to be honest – kind of scared me.  So we quietly and quickly turned around and made our way back to the car.  We didn’t make it to Mammoth until late in the evening, so we just had a late dinner and went to bed.  Sightseeing in Mammoth would have to wait until tomorrow.

I know it’s been a while since I started blogging about our trip to Grand Teton/Yellowstone, but I’ll continue on anyway.

On day 2 we started out our day by eating breakfast at the Pioneer Grill at Jackson Lake Lodge.  The restaurant is pretty fun and unique.  It has one long continual counter that snakes throughout the room.  I ordered huckleberry pancakes with huckleberry syrup.  Huckleberries are kind of a big thing in Grand Teton and Yellowstone.  In just about every gift shop you can buy something that has huckleberries in it – syrup, pancake mix, candy, salsa, jam, etc.

Before we checked out of the lodge, we had to spend some time looking out on the Tetons.  I could’ve spent all day there!

(Mount Moran)

The only sign of wildlife we saw was an elk out in the distance.  I don’t think it’s in this picture, but it was pretty camouflaged.

We drove to Jenny Lake again and took the ferry across the lake.  We were lucky because it was the last day of the year that the ferry was running.  Once we were on the other side of the lake we hiked a short ways to Hidden Falls.  Some pretty pictures that we captured on our way up:

(Hidden Falls – it’s a lot bigger than it looks in this picture)

Afterwards we went back to the Pioneer Grill for lunch and sat on the cushy couches in the lobby, gazing at the Tetons for one last time.  I was a little sad to leave Grand Teton, but that quickly went away when I thought about where we’d be going next – Yellowstone!

(Jackson Lake Overlook – our last view of the Tetons)

We drove straight to the Old Faithful Inn where we spent the rest of the day and stayed the night.  We didn’t get to stay in the original part of the lodge (that’s on my list to do someday), but we did get a room on the east wing that looked right out on Old Faithful.  I think we got to see Old Faithful go off 3 times from our room (it goes off about every 90 minutes).

(Old Faithful Inn – the east wing is on the left side of the picture)

We walked around the area for a little bit, and then ate dinner in the dining room of the lodge.  The food we ordered wasn’t the best and the room was extremely warm, but it was still a memorable experience.  We walked through the new visitors center and then waited outside in the dark for Old Faithful to go off.  There were only a few people outside, which was pretty nice because during the day there are crowds and crowds of people waiting to see Old Faithful.  As we waited on the benches out in the cold, we saw steam rising from geysers in the distance and saw a couple of them erupt.  When Old Faithful finally went off it was almost pitch black, but we could see the faint outline of the water and steam.  Since there weren’t many people outside with us, it was very quiet and all we heard were sounds of the eruption.  That was a special experience for me, to see Old Faithful in a different light – literally.

We warmed ourselves up in the lobby, where everyone was hanging out.  There are many couches and chairs on the main floor around the fireplace and on the balconies of all 3 floors.  All of them were full.  We sat on one of the windowsills and listened to a musician play old romantic songs on the grand piano.  After a while we saw a couple right near us leave their seats, so we headed over to sit in them, but there was another couple that was almost running to take those seats.  It was kind of surprising (and amusing) to see people all around the lobby standing around like vultures, waiting for seats to sit in.   We eventually were able to sit down in chairs but went back to our room a few minutes later to give other people a chance to sit down.

(the lobby, image taken from this site.  I didn’t want to take my camera everywhere with me, so there were parts of the trip that I didn’t take any pictures of)

That pretty much wraps up day 2.  Let’s see how quickly I can get day 3 done…

Doug and I have been meaning to go to Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks for years.  Every summer we have thought that we’d have time for it but it always fell through the cracks.  This year we finally decided to make time for it, and it was well worth it!  Because our summer was so busy, we decided to go in the fall.  I think it was the perfect time to go except for the fact that some visitors centers were already closed for the winter season.  The weather was perfect, the fall colors were amazing, and there weren’t a lot of people there.  Here’s day 1 of our adventure:

We drove up to Jackson Hole the night before so we could rest up after all the driving and be ready for another day of driving.  In the morning we spent time walking around the town square and made our traditional stop at the candy shop.  Then we headed up to Grand Teton National Park.  We hiked to the Taggart and Bradley lakes – about 5 miles round trip.

(beginning of the trail – the fall colors really were at their peak!)

(a little river we crossed a few times)

(taking a break on the hike)

The first lake we reached was Taggart Lake.  We found a big rock on the water’s edge and sat there for a good half hour.  It was so peaceful and rejuvenating.

(view from our rock)

We then made our way up to Bradley lake.  It was a hard and steep climb in some places, but it was worth it.

(looking back down on Taggart Lake on our way to Bradley Lake)

When we finally made it to Bradley lake we stopped and ate lunch.

After our tiring but beautiful hike, we made our way to Jenny Lake.  We were hoping to catch a ferry ride across the lake, but they had just closed for the day.  Instead we spent some time just looking out on the lake and mountains.  It was breathtaking.  If I could live at Jenny Lake I would!

(Jenny Lake overlook)

(gorgeous fall colors, even brighter in person!)

(taking in the beauty)

(enjoying the picture perfect weather)

(another gorgeous view)

From here we drove up to Jackson Lake Lodge where we stayed the night.  We ate dinner at the lodge in the Mural Room.  This was definitely the highlight of our time spent in Grand Teton.

(Mural Room – image from this site)

We got a table right next to the floor-to-ceiling windows.  Watching the sun set behind the Tetons while eating a delicious (and expensive!) meal was such a special experience for us.

(our view at dinner)

Our room wasn’t in the main lodge (the main lodge rooms were already booked and probably too expensive anyway).  But we enjoyed staying the night in a king cottage.  It had one of the most comfortable beds I’ve ever slept in.  That or we were just so tired that any bed would’ve felt like a dream.