What a Difference a Week Makes

A few windy days blew most of the colored leaves off of the trees on our hill.

Our orange tree has been working since spring at producing two oranges. These fruits were green for most of the summer, but lately they have turned orange.

Perfecting Our Chicken Noodle Soup Recipe

Lauren and Hannah were here for the weekend, and we made chicken noodle soup, which is one of the girls' favorite foods. Among the four of us, we face a few disagreements about what we want in chicken noodle soup. Lauren doesn't much care for broth, so she wants something closer to chicken noodle stew. Hannah and Deanna like big noodles--which I call chewing gum noodles because I think they are too thick and wide and doughy. I like my vegetables just fully cooked, not overdone and mushy. Here is our "perfected" recipe.

Hearty Chicken Noodle Soup (Perfected)

1 whole grilled, roasted, or poached chicken, boned and cut up
3 49-ounce cans Swanson chicken broth
2 pounds of carrots, peeled and cut up
1 head of celery, cleaned and cut up
Double batch of semolina egg noodles, rolled to #3 thickness and cut to about the size of Wrigley’s Spearmint chewing gum

Bring chicken broth to a boil. Reduce heat but maintain slow boil. Cook celery for 10 minutes. Add carrots, and cook 15 minutes longer. Add noodles, and cook for 5 minutes. Add chicken, and shut off heat. Let stand 15-20 minutes before serving.

Note : Chicken should be cooked and prepared ahead of time. Noodles should be almost ready by the time vegetables are cooking. We use the noodle recipe from Bob's Red Mill semolina https://www.bobsredmill.com/catalog/index.php?action=showdetails&product_ID=348, make the dough in the food processor, and roll it through a pasta machine.

Today's chicken noodle soup.

Foggy Fall Mornings

When we wake up in the morning and look out our bedroom window, we have been seeing beautiful maples turning yellow and red. Our morning drive down the hill has been taking us out of the colorful woods and into a very foggy river valley.

Dense fog in the valley.

Fog beyond the maples.

But up on our hill, we're above the fog.

Orphan Corn

We don't know how this stalk of corn grew in the rock pile near our lower porch, but it did. Unfortunately, the ears were too small to eat.

Making Applesauce Last Weekend

Deanna's Grandma Irma visited us last weekend, and we made applesauce. We bought Cortland apples from McIlquham's orchard in Chippewa county and enjoyed the warm fall weather before getting started on Saturday.

Putting some heat on the raw ingredients.

Almost ready for the food mill.