Chicken Soup and Sourdough on the Back Porch

Sunday nights are soup night.  It started back when I had rehearsals on Sunday afternoons for a community choral group.  Mr. Garner would watch the game on the TV in the kitchen, chop ingredients, saute, stir and simmer until I got home.   Catching a whiff of delicious cooking smells as I turned the key in the door, I would drop my music on the piano, and head to the kitchen where we would all sit down to a wonderful family dinner.

During the summer, we don’t make soup.  Sometimes we grill.  In the coastal South there is ever-present humidity, and it doesn’t make sense to make it worse with a hot kitchen!  So when the leaves start looking a little golden around the edges, and the sun’s path is lower in the sky, and the sky takes on a Maxfield Parrish blue, I start leaning toward a shift in the menu, anticipating, in particular, the return of Sunday Soup.   Sunday Soup also provides plenty of yummy leftovers which is helpful for Monday night’s more hectic dinnertime pace due to GraceNote ‘s American Heritage Girl meeting.

Now that Autumn is here, the slight chill in the air keeps uninvited mosquitoes at bay.  Last night the weather was fair, so Mr. Garner set chopped pecan wood in the firepit on the back patio, while GraceNotes and I set the table on the back porch, served up the soup, cut the bread, and lit a few candles.  Then we all sat down to thank God for the blessings of the day, enjoy dinner, the sunset, the crackling of the fire, the crisp air, the serenade of a few remaining crickets and to wait for the Harvest Moon to emerge from the glowing clouds.

We miss our son.  We texted him a picture.

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Our favorite Chicken Noodle Soup and Beef Stew recipes come from The New Best Recipes by Cooks Illustrated Magazine.  Our Sourdough bread comes from Panera.  GraceNotes is enjoying Welch’s Sparkling White Grape Juice, and Mr. Garner picked up a bottle of DeMarco Prosecco to celebrate Sunday Soup Night!

Do you have a favorite soup recipe?

Just a pork roast and garlic and a crock pot…

You know not to expect much in the way of recipes from me.  But when I find something that’s really good, I want to share it with my friends and family who are as busy as I am, some of you busier!  Slow Cooker Garlic Pork Roast is absolutely the easiest crock pot recipe I’ve ever encountered, and delicious!  We’ve made this twice now at the Garner’s, and each time it’s been so good that Number One Son will just open the fridge door, pull the plate out (the leftovers I’d planned to use in white chili one time and enchiladas the other time) and eat it.  Cold. 

Just imagine the same plate of tender pork roast warm from the crock pot with green beans and roasted red potatoes!  

I subscribe by email to Kalyn’s Kitchen, she has a South Beach friendly (low glycemic) food blog and of the very few recipes I’ve posted, I think most are from her blog.  Kalyn has branched out to include a crock pot friendly food blog called Slow Cooker from Scratch.  This blog often highlights slow cooker recipes from other food bloggers in this case  a blog called From Scratch to Plate.  All three of these are good blogs, and helpful for someone like me who is really busy, trying to eat at home, seeking easy recipes that are economical, healthy and don’t use a lot of processed foods.  

Here’s a picture:

Here is a link to the recipe post:  Slow Cooker Garlic Pork Roast.

Enjoy!

Tossing a Salad!

Salad preparation isn’t particularly difficult, but it is sometimes the last thing I feel like doing on those nights when everything is running behind!  We tend to eat late because Ian doesn’t get home from Crew until 6:15 or so, and then “freshens up” a little.  So we might not sit down to dinner until 7 PM.  Our sort-of-hectic-schedule can also make proper meals a challenge with Boy Scouts and American Heritage Girls on Mondays, Church Choir on Wednesdays, and Ralph’s classes on Mondays and Thursdays! 

I’ve been delighted to have a helpful kitchen assistant ever since we took the time to go through all the steps to make a salad!  Plus I’ve caught my anti-vegan actually eating a few pieces of lettuce, and nibbling on the carrots now that she’s on the chopping and tossing side of the counter!  I’m thankful for the fun and do-able goals we’ve accomplished to earn the AHG Cooking Badge, and especially thankful for the prompting to partner up with my daughter in the kitchen!

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Guest Post: It’s for the birds…

Red-bellied Woodpecker in the Oak Tree

Project FeederWatch, created by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, is not only a great way to help scientists study bird populations, it’s a terrific way to share one of my favorite activities, bird watching, with my awesome homeschooled daughter and learn a bit more about the creatures that visit our little backyard corner of God’s Creation.  We studied birds extensively last year with Apologia Exploring Creation Zoology 1 Flying Creatures.  Project Feederwatch is a great way to keep that learning current in a fun way doing a little Citizen Science!

The process couldn’t be simpler: after signing up, choose two consecutive days to watch every week and record the MAXIMUM amount of each species seen at any one time. Count any birds that are drawn to the feeder, birdbath, flowers, fruit trees, etc. and send in the results by mail or online!

On our Wednesday and Thursday Counting Days, our most frequent visitors are a dozen-and-a-half house sparrows that flit back and forth to the feeder from the safety of some nearby English Ivy. They are joined at the seed and suet by small groups of Carolina chickadees, house finches, purple finches, Carolina wrens, European sparrows, blue jays, a beautiful red-bellied woodpecker, and an occasional northern cardinal or two. Beneath the feeder, a handful of mourning doves share the spilled sunflower and safflower seeds with a few white-throated sparrows. A Northern Mockingbird shows up every morning for a drink at the birdbath, and will grab a piece of orange from the feeding tray when I have a spare piece to put out.

While we have had cameo appearances by a downy woodpecker and a dark-eyed junco, the birds seem to have access to our counting schedule and enjoy saving the rarer birds for the days when we aren’t recording them! Tufted titmice, red-winged blackbirds, hairy woodpeckers, even a Cooper’s Hawk – they’ve all showed up with grins on their little beaks knowing full well we can’t brag about them unless it’s Wednesday or Thursday!

Feederwatch Booklet with lots of information and instructions!

The biggest avian insult came the TUESDAY (get it? Not our counting days!) after Christmas, when a flock of over 200 robins, flanked by over 100 sparrows and red-winged blackbirds descended on our backyard American Standard Holly.  It started the day weighed down with beautiful, juicy red berries and finished the afternoon stripped of all nutritional value.  By Wednesday, COUNTING DAY, all that was left of the robins was a sticky coating of purple holly poop on every flat surface in the backyard, and neighboring surrounds.

I haven’t seen a robin since.

Oh well, the happy chattering of the wrens lifts my spirits and reminds me all birds are welcome here whenever they choose to show. We’ll be watching!

Guest post by Ralph Garner! 

Visit our Pinterest Board for Garner Project Feederwatch Bird Sitings!  We have pinned images from Cornell site www.allaboutbirds.org/guide since it’s difficult to get good photos that show the markings, beaks etc really well. 

Get in on the act!  Today begins a 4 day bird count that might be easier for some than the 6 month long feeder watch.  Visit the Cornell Lab site for more details!  Fun and easy!  Project Feederwatch website is www.feederwatch.org  the Great Backyard Birdcount is www.birdsource.org/gbbc