A Relaxing Evening

My dear cousin sent me Pioneer Woman's recipe book. This is no ordinary cookbook. It is a book full of short stories, frozen frames from daily life in the ranching business, and lots of good food! It's like a comfortable coffee conversation with a friend. In line with the food topic, I had some frozen chunks of pumpkin in my freezer and had been wanting to make a creamy soup out of it. This I did. I took my new book and my soup experiment (no tomato next time I think) out to enjoy the summery spring day on 'my' front porch.

Puffy Pancake Recipe

Here Jeanine, I think this is the right one =) !

Flying Apple Flapjack
Betty Crocker: Baking for Today

2 Tbsp butter or margarine
2 Tbsp packed brown sugar
1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 medium cooking apple, thinly sliced (about 1 cup-ish)
2 eggs
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup milk
1/4 tsp. salt

1) Heat oven to 400 degrees. In 9-inch glass pie plate, melt butter in oven. Sprinkle brown sugar and cinnamon over butter. Place apple slices on cinnamon-sugar mixture.

2) In medium bowl, beat eggs slightly with wire whisk or hand beater. Beat in flour, milk and salt just until mixed (do not overbeat). Pour batter over apple slices.

3) Bake 30 to 35 minutes or until puffy and deep golden brown. Immediately loosen edge of pancake. Place heatproof serving plate upside down on pie plate; turn serving plate and pie plate over to remove pancake (if you want to remove it).

Puffy Pancakes for Saturday Morning

A puff pancake made from a recipe book my sister-in-law gave me. It's been fun going through it! This is alot like a Dutch baby pancake. It puffs up in the oven, forms a crust of sorts then settles down as it cools. I ate it with sour cream and syrup =). Yummy!

Paint the Day

At this sweet house I'm in, there are wooden cutting boards which I use all the time! I had a clusters of red tomatoes, olive oil, green basil, and purple onions on the chopping block and couldn't resist taking a picture. Color is such a blessing to a day!

A cattle ramp in the Madison Valley. We stopped on the way to or from Bozeman. This was before I moved to MT. I was in the beginning stages of discovering my desire to move here!

A Visit Home

The times when I find myself at my parents' home are treasured indeed. The privilige of seeing my family, eating breakfast and dinner around the family table, cuddling my precious niece, and driving around the place with Dad is one I cherish. Liesel is quite the chunky cutie these days. In this picture, she and grandma had been organizing wrapping stuff. Somehow some ribbon ended up in her hair! Cute! They walked the mile or so up to where Dad and I were inspecting a beautiful old barn hence the barn boards for a background. Fun times! Wow!

Icy Air, Hay, Mountains, Blue Sky, and a Willys Jeep

Car time sometimes takes up more of my time than I ever imagined. It takes at least 10 hours to get to my two main destinations. The country I pass through and get to see, the people at the little cafes I get to converse with, and the air I get to breath make the driving part of the fun usually. This trip back up to Libby was no different. On the way down I stopped at a little family run cafe in Whitehall. I bought a yummy muffin and asked the laid back folks the best way to Ennis from there. Not very often, but sometimes, you're actually told what you WANT to hear! They told me the quickest way was through Twin Bridges and Virginia City. Exactly what I wanted to hear. I sped away muffin crumbs projecting from my window every mile or so =). Naturally on the way back I went the same route. They weather was even more beautiful on the way back. picture~ Sphinx Mountain

The route takes me through Ennis, Virginia City, Alder, Sheridan, and Twin Bridges. This is the Ruby Valley. The Ruby with it's cattle, fishing, and Tobacco Root Mountains. I love it in winter too. This is just outside of Sheridan I believe. I saw the coolest thing close to here. A rancher had his small, old pickup rigged to haul two round bales at once! It sat the pickup down fairly far, but it worked.



This beautiful Jeep was outside of Virginia City. Somebody wants to sell it. It's cute isn't it!