Posted on 08/01/2025 6:03:57 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
Bacon-Wrapped Cream-Cheese-Stuffed-Jalapenos.
Bacon AND cream cheese----what could possibly go wrong?
20 jalapenos, halved/seeded 1-2 bars cr/cheese, softened 1-2 pkg best bacon, in halves
Half and seed jalapenos; wear rubber gloves. Stuff each half w/ cr/cheese; wrap w/ half strip
bacon. Cook 350 deg oven til bacon is done. Easily adjusted to make as many as you need.
Oh, sorry, I misunderstood. But I do have a couple cannas I’d like to give a shot (with overwintering).
I’ll do some research later and see if the impatiens would be practical. They SEEM tailor made...
Yes, I’d noticed the numbers of mice out by the chicken houses at night seemed lower! Now I know why. But, I don’t want this snake deterring the chickens from properly coming in to roost at night and lay in the morning , which seems to be happening with this particular house / little group of chickens. Two of them were out “somewhere” (I couldn’t find them - very unusual) last night. But they did show up this morning. Only one went back in the chicken house (even for food treats!) though.
I noticed yesterday that the dogwoods are starting to ‘bronze’. They are some of the earliest trees to change color in the fall. Public school will be starting the 25th, not that far away.
Regarding the dogs, my niece got her boys a black lab pup - female, 7 weeks old, this past week. The mom had weaned the pups already so she was ready to go to her new home. She is already showing good instincts for retrieving & having an interest in finding things .... dad will be happy since he’s a duck hunter & she can go hunting with him. The youngest boy is ‘in love’ with the dog ... truly puppy love!
At church this morning, I was talking to a guy who has a painting business, asking if he also did drywall. Another lady was breezing by, did an about face and said “drywall? do you need drywall work?” Why yes, yes we do because of our roof leak that ruined our foyer ceiling. Turns out her husband does drywall - he’s retired, but does small projects. Once we get the new roof & things dry out, we’ll let her know & she’ll put him in touch.
Busy week coming up. The three ‘biggies’ are : mowing, since I didn’t do it this weekend. Finish unloading the half trailer of mulch that’s left after I filled in the front landscape edging (and ‘maybe’ get another load of dirt for the raised beds). Cut down 3 more trees we decided should go.
Adding a 4th - go to the orchard for peaches!
Today is warmer, a touch more humidity in the air. It’s pleasant since there’s a breeze & the sun is sinking towards the horizon. High 80’s & a day or two of temps around 90 so our fall preview is over for now.
He’d eat his left FOOT if it were wrapped in crispy bacon! :)
There’s no BACON in that Jalapeno Popper Dip recipe I posted earlier. I think that needs to change...STAT!
Mom and her Girl Gang were out, today. We had a break in the rain for about three hours, so they raided the garden. Kale, Cucumbers, Zucchini and various rag-tag sad-looking tomatoes left the place. MAN, do I have the Green Beans to pick again! Yikes! (Tomorrow!)
The Pears (Clapp's Favorite) are absolutely GORGEOUS and perfection right now, so I've already told Beau that when he's home on Tuesday to get ready to pick!
I love Fall. I love Spring. Summer is nothing but work, work, work!
Still looking at gutters and now looking at Menard’s. They have two thicknesses of aluminum available, 0.019” and 0.027”. Lowes is 0.0185” which is thinner than Menard’s thin stuff and Lowes has no heavy duty version.
The HD at Menard’s is 16’ long while light duty at both places is 10’ long.
40% thicker would require less hangers and just be better in general. I need 72’ plus some to hang off the end of each side to reach the inlet of the tanks.
5 lengths x 16’ is 80’. The price for the 16 footers is $32 or $160 for the five. Less hangers, less splices and those gutter accessories are cheaper than Lowes.
Those leaf guards aren’t stocked at the local Menard’s but they do free ship-to-store and looks like they’ll work with the gutter I’m looking at and, a 25 pack of 3’ is 75’. I can cover the ends that hang off with something solid since there’s no roof to run off into them.
And of course as I’m researching gutter, we had 1.45”or rain here today that probably would have been enough to fill a tank or two.
It appears the answer to “Can impatiens be overwintered?” is “Yes”, with some qualifications, such as the New Guinea type requiring quite cool temperatures. That’s not practical for me!
Beau’d eat his left FOOT if it were wrapped in crispy bacon! :)
LOL———I knew that.
Ok, this is cool. Thank you! The ones I have this year are Sunpatiens, so I think I will take stem cuttings and see how far I get. I will be space limited.
A few years ago, I overwintered everything on our dining room table, which is rarely used, and I had grow lights all over it. I was ambitious that year. I even gave my cat sitter instructions to water ALL of the plants in the dining room when we were gone for Thanksgiving that year. Which she did!!
My next door neighbor, who isn’t USUALLY the snoopy kind, asked once if she could come inside my house that winter. Of course, she was welcome. Then she confessed to me that she only wanted to come inside so she could see if I was growing marijuana plants in my house that year! LOL!!
I appreciated her candor, but no, that’s not my style. We are flexible and easy going, but not like that. I don’t care if anyone else indulges, but it’s not for me. Still, it hit my funny bone. We love these neighbors, but sometimes people leave you scratching your heads. Thankfully, we continue to get along well.
Somehow we got sidetracked into some chores and not others today. Got plants watered, fertilized, and weeded. Pulled out two shrubs in the meditation garden that I’m not fond of. They are languishing over there, and I’ve already given them plenty of time and attention.
Hubby and I are both actively daydreaming (and night dreaming!) about this new way of a meditation garden that needs to be updated, if for no other reason than the sun requirements, and the fact that our lawn getting to it has been obliterated. Might as well figure out something soon so that if heavy equipment needs to roll there again, at least we won’t have to replace things twice.
Anyway, we went to a couple of places today seeing what they had as far as large stones like flagstone, bluestone, fieldstone, and boulders. One place was closed. The other was open, and we were able to talk with a few folks there. We will probably talk with their landscape designer later in the week.
On Tuesday evening, we will have a powwow with another landscaper who has helped us in the past. He is semi-retired, but goes to church with us. He has mentored a young man, who we have hired for some yard cleanup and such for 2 years now, a great young man who just graduated a year ago. Is a big part of our county 4-H program. He has his own burgeoning business, and seriously, this is a kid who knows that hard work pays off. Besides his work vehicles and 6 employees (at age 19), he has a sports car when he’s not driving one of his work trucks. He has ambition. So he will probably help us out on the heavy lifting part if the price is right.
So today we tried mocking up a stacked river rock water feature. If this is feasible, it will be kinda cool. Those rocks came from our best friend’s house in Ohio, from his creek. They aren’t many, but they are really neat, and I hope we can incorporate them into this project.
Needless to say, I didn’t get started on dinner prep until 6:45. So Ina’s braised short ribs will have to wait until tomorrow (again!). Gonna be a heck of a meal when I can get it started in time!
ZUCCHINI BREAD / 2 loaves
3 eggs 1 c veg oil 2 c coarse-grated zucchini (loosely packed) 2 c ea sugar flour 1 tsp ea vanilla cinnamon baking soda, salt 1/4 tsp b/powder
Method w/ elec/mixer, beat 3 eggs frothy. Gradually add 2 cups sugar. Stir in 1 cup oil, vanilla. Beat thick and lemon colored. Stir in zucchini. Whisk/ combine 2 cups flour, cinnamon, baking soda, 1/4 teaspoon baking powder and salt. Stir dry mixture into wet, stir/combine. Pour into 2 sprayed loaf pans. Bake 350°F an hour...til done. Cool in pans 10 min, then loosen sides w/ knife and remove. Cool on wire rack. Brush tops of loaf with melted butter while still warm.
For sweet touch, glaze w/ Lemon Icing.
Heh, the wet weather has been hanging west of us. We really could use some, but, dry does let me get more done outdoors.
For breaks yesterday, I paid bills and took apart a Lithium battery pack to snag the 18650’s inside. It’s a 3x3 array, so, I for now left it as 2x 3 batts in parallel, 1x 2 batts in parallel, and 1x a single battery for my headlamp. All took a charge successfully despite being over 5 years old, and down to about 1.9 volts each. I have a few more of these packs, so, I should get them apart soon and get them recharged. (They were new old stock when I bought them on eBay. The batts are NCR, so, they should be good quality. They charge faster than the 18650’s I pulled out of a failing laptop battery pack - my theory is that for the laptop application, the charge rate is being self limited inside each battery to minimize heat issues. THESE packs have a fancy board complete with thermocouple sensors for each group of 3 parallel batts, so, the regulation is external to the batteries. My smart charger has it’s own heat sensing and a fan that draws cool air over the batts being charged, while the laptop batteries had little if any air cooling. I charged the 3-packs at 1000 mAh (total), the 2x pack at 700 mAh, and the single battery at 500 mAh. None got over 100 deg. F according to my infrared thermometer.
That all said, I need to find a charger for the complete 3x3 packs, as I think these would work in most moderate duty 12 volt applications (such as a small Bluetooth amplifier capable of running 2 ohm speakers). The board that was on the packs originally has a 9 pin connector, and it looks to me as if the board “converses” with the medical computer it was made for, and won’t work without that communication.
Haha - that’s a funny story.
Not quite so funny — Locally, we had a young lady who was a “weather girl” on a local TV station, and her boyfriend or husband (not sure) get busted for growing pot in their house. I think it was over the limit allowed for personal use”. She was fired and I never heard of her again. Kinda sad, really - she was reasonably competent at her job...
Anyway, I hope the label on these impatiens indicates the exact variety. Gotta remember to check that later. (Eye roll!) I don’t want to put a lot of effort into a variety that’s likely to fail the conditions I can give the plants — cool and with modest light, but not REALLY cool all the time. I am NOT going to air condition the basement in the winter during a warm spell!
Different subject for “All”: Yesterday afternoon, I noticed our strongest Mortgage Lifter tomato plant has finally put out a few flowers. As big as the fruits are supposed to get, a few flowers should be “enough. We shall see!
Can this be made with less sugar for those who don’t like their bread too sweet? Would one use a little less oil? I’m surprised the recipe uses so little baking powder or does the beaten egg white carry part of the load?. What are the flour options, white, part, or all whole grains?
Can this be made with less sugar for those who don’t like their bread too sweet?
Most definitely——use less sugar.
Would one use a little less oil?
You need the oil fot moistness——but couls swap 1/4 c w/ applesause.
I’m surprised the recipe uses so little baking powder or does the beaten egg white carry part of the load?.
It’s a bread ........not a cake.
Will taste different and might bake-up differently with
other than white flour.
I just put a insulated flannel with hoodie on my watch list. Really need to get going on the tunnel too.
A beautiful morning here - there is such heavy dew that the sunlight shining on a low angle as the sun rises reflects in a way that makes the field across the road look almost white. Unfortunately, my phone camera isn’t good enough to capture it. Up on the hill, the round bales have appeared - the farmer worked all afternoon & early evening yesterday to get a large field of ‘fluffed’ grass up in bales. Chance of showers going to 30% tomorrow, 60% Wednesday, so it’s a rush to get the hay baled.
The chance of rain going up considerably has changed my plans - I need to get the mulch off the trailer & get the last load of dirt I need before Wednesday, preferably late today, early tomorrow. The dirt pile has had a week to dry out - I don’t want to haul extra heavy wet dirt. I have half a trailer load of mulch to get off the trailer first so I’ll be shoveling big time this morning. I don’t have the 4th metal raised bed yet (this next load goes in beds 3 & 4), but I think I have enough room to stash it all in bed 3 - it will be piled up, but I’ll tarp it until I can get bed 4, then just shovel from one bed to the other. It can also stay on the trailer under the pole shed until I get a day with no rain for shoveling it off. There’s no telling at this point when I can get #4 - mid-September at the earliest probably. I just need to “be done” with hauling dirt!
No more dirt! For anything that won’t go in the raised beds, I am going to straw bale garden next year. I can definitely grow dahlias in straw bales & can get an earlier start because when the bales decompose, they put off warmth & you can make a mini-greenhouse situation. My niece has dahlias already (gorgeous ones!) and I have one bud. She’s telling me September is when they really bloom around here. I got seedlings from her and planted mine out about the same time, but evidently we’re about 2 weeks, maybe 3, behind her in warming temps. My seedlings languished for a good month and a half before taking off. She did promise she’d give me dahlia tubers next spring - the ones I bought this past spring from Walmart were no good. The year before I had good tubers from Lowes & grew some great plants so I am anxious to do tubers next spring - what comes up is not as fragile as seedlings.
We are starting the search for Rose of Sharon bushes. I suspect we’ll have to order them from someone online, but there are 2 garden centers that we have found, one where we got the Little Missy boxwoods, the other where I get dirt. I’ll check them both out this week. I’ll call one & when I get dirt, talk to the other one. When I researched when to plant, fall or spring is the time. If fall, which is coming up, sooner is better, to let the roots settle in; however, it should be after the heat/dryness of summer has passed. We’d like to get the plants in soon instead of waiting for spring.
I hope your rock water feature turns out. I love rocks - did projects on the AT with them for years. We did cribbing for walls to support the trail edge or repair where stumps had torn out trail & put in steps where needed. No small rocks, especially for steps - needed rocks it took 2-3 people to move. Cribbing rocks could be a little smaller and I messed with rocks bigger than what I should have, which is why my back ‘talks’ to me when I overdo it. Still, I miss it. You’ll have to post a pic if you get a good result with your rocks :—)
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