Dilly Beans...

I made pickled green beans last night... dilly beans.  I got the recipe from a link my cousins posted on facebook... Allrecipes.com.  It's a great website.  I have a link to it here in my blog.  I hope the pickled beans are good.  I was thinking they would be a pretty tasty garnish sticking out of a nice spicy glass of tomato juice which I plan to can once the tomatoes finally ripen.  Man!  What a lot of work.  There is an incredible investment in time and energy in each jar of home preserved food when you take it all the way back to tilling the garden.  I'm just a newby.  I love canned green beans and I've already canned one batch but I wanted to be brave and experiment.  I used dill and jalepeno pepper from my garden along with the beans and other spices.  I came really close to screwing them up though :)  I had just placed the lids and bands on the jars and dropped them down in the water bath when I realized I had forgotten to add the alum to the jars.  Since I've never made pickles of any kind I don't know what the result would have been.  I assumed it was a very important ingredient so I took the jars out, opened them up and added the alum and dunked them back in to process.  I was nervous that I messed up the lids but they all sealed perfectly and here they are...

I'm supposed to let them sit for at least two weeks before opening.  I'll let you know how it worked out.

The stats:  151.3 and glucose 99.  I think the weight is a new low by just a couple of ounces... but heck... every ounce counts right?  :)  I'll take it!

Lets see... well I guess I'll report on the event of the day yesterday... other than the dilly beans.  I already mentioned this on facebook so all you so called facebook friends will already have seen this but here is the full account - whether or not you want to read about it.  :)  Yesterday around noon I went outside for some reason which was probably critical but has now slipped my memory.  I looked over at the barn and there was one of our mama cows, Mumbo just standing at the corner of the barn. WRONG side of the barn!  I immediately started toward her to begin the process of rounding her up when I remembered that I really ought to take a picture. :)  Really I just wanted to send it to Dave's phone to jump start his heart :)  I know... mean.  It worked too...

He got the message and called immediately!  Anyway... after taking the picture I headed toward the cow shed behind the barn to get out a loaf of bread we usually have on hand just for this sort of emergency.  They love bread!  When I got back there all the other cows including Mumbo were standing there looking expectantly at me and thinking ooo yummy-bread!  Wait... including Mumbo!  Well... if Mumbo is in the fence then WHO is that in front of the barn???  I ran back around to make sure I wasn't going crazy and there she was.  Could have been Mumbo's twin... ear tag and all.  Of course most of the other cows around here have ear tags like that... (later Shannon - at work - suggested that we could get our cows pretty collars to identify them - but somehow I knew the other "ranchers" would laugh at us :) so I dismissed that idea).  Next thing to do was call Carol.  Since this rogue cow looked just like Mumbo I figured it must be hers.  We bought Mumbo from her and I figured she must have the twin.  By that time fake Mumbo had trotted down the fence line and across the creek and was heading toward our neighbor Jean's place so I called her.  She said it wasn't hers.  I didn't think it was.  I couldn't remember seeing any Mumbo look alikes over there and she said usually when they have strange cow visitors they call Randy Miller - whoever that is.  Granny (Carol's mommy) came our direction and determined that it wasn't theirs or the Oman's cows.  Later Carol filled me in on who Randy Miller is. You know the saying you learn something new every day?  Well here it is.  Apparently we live in open range country which means if you don't want rouge cows on your place you fence them out since any and all cows are welcome to meander about and eat all your hay, grass, trample your garden or what ever seems good to them.  I guess this Randy Miller buys cows at auction, turns them out to fatten them up and sells them.  Dave thought this was a great idea until I explained that the neighbors don't like it much :)  Dave was then very proud to say that once he installed the cattle guard in the driveway that had been delivered the day before that we wouldn't be getting any more rogue cows (if they chose to visit us via the driveway!  I think he was having a blue cheese brain fart).  And that's the end of that little moment of excitement.   

And now for the REALLY exciting announcement... IT'S FRIDAY!!!!  Have a great weekend!  :)

Ciao!