Sunchokes

The lovely Ilene recently sent me a huge bag of sunchoke tubers to start my own patch. Most ‘chokes will turn mushy when cooked but Ilene has a variety that stays crunchy even when cooked, so can be used in place of water chestnuts.

I peeled and sliced one sacrificial tuber, similar in size to the ones above, for raw tasting. Holy cow, it was scrumptious! I do believe I’ve found one of my new favorite raw veggies. I’ve had raw ‘chokes a few times but this one was really good! I’ll have to wait for next year’s crop to taste them cooked.

I’ve planted them all in the wellhouse garden, in the section on the right. Eventually, I’ll get a few patches going out around the yard and fences but, for now, I wanted them to be in a protected spot where they won’t get killed off by animals and construction projects. (Garlic is planted in the section on the left and scattered a bit with the ‘chokes as well.)

Honey, I Sharpied the kids.

‘Twas the first day of Christmas cookie delivery and I found myself moved, by the holiday spirit, to decorate.

Happy Birthday, Steve!

We took him out to all-you-can-eat steak

and put a good amount of elbow grease into a freebie grill mate/station for his gift.

He was surrounded by good lookin’ women (and fellas).

What more could a guy want?

Cookiethon

I did it! I may do a gallon of gingerbread tomorrow as well but, if I don’t get to, I have plenty from today’s baking. We have sugar cookies, snickerdoodles, chocolate with peanut butter chips, peanut butter with chocolate chips, and oatmeal-coconut-raisin cookies.

Okay, so we don’t have any oatmeal-coconut-raisin ones left because someone ate them all. Several someones. Really, we were just doing everyone a favor. They were good. Too good. They would have made the other cookies taste blah in comparison. You can thank us for saving you.

All wrapped up in brown paper and cotton yarn, it’s all so Little House on the Prairie, don’t you think?

Psst. Tomorrow is Steve’s birthday so we’re planning on being temporarily irresponsible. Don’t tell!

But I don’t wanna!

I’m supposed to be doing this:

But, instead, I’ve been playing with this:

I’m supposed to make roughly 1000 cookies for our annual tradition of gifting to local friends & neighbors. (It’s usually candy but we’re broke so they get the more cheaply-made cookies this year.) I’ve only made 300-400 so far and I just cannot seem to make myself do the rest. Bah humbug. I want to play with my sewing toys instead — and have been.

If I don’t post pics of giant piles of cookies by next weekend, someone poke me until I do. The kids love going around and handing out loot each year so they’d be mighty disappointed if I slacked this year.

(I wrote this last night but must have hit “draft” rather than “publish”. Doh! ‘Scuse the slightly stale post.)