A Blogging Break

Taking a blogging break for awhile – am busy with remodeling the living room, taking trips to the cabin, and, most importantly, just plain hanging out with my too-fast-growing boys!

Seasonal Pumpkin Bread

One of the best pumpkin bread recipes I've tasted - moist and spicy.

Seasonal Pumpkin Bread

3 1/2 C. flour
1 tabl. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
2 tsp. ginger
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. cloves
4 large eggs, beaten
1 C. sugar
1 C. brown sugar
1 1/2 sticks margarine, melted
1 - 16 oz. can pumpkin

Grease two 9X5" loaf pans. Put oven racks in lower-middle position and preheat oven to 350. Mix flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and spices in a large bowl; set aside. In another bowl, whisk eggs and sugars. Whisk in margarine and then pumpkin. Beat wet ingredients into dry ingredients until smooth; divide into two pans. Bake until golden brown and toothpick comes out clean, 40-50 minutes. Let cool a few minutes and remove to rack to cool completely.

Harvest Time

(Photos by Eli)

More Inspiration

I sat there entranced as I watched Miss Alice. I had noticed that in her presence often I would have big thoughts, ideas that went so far beyond my usual ones that they astonished me. It was not so much what Miss Alice said that sparked the thoughts, rather what she was.

-- Catherine Marshall, excerpt from Christy

The Red Caboose

My mom and I spent the day together shopping on Friday. For lunch we stopped at the quirky and quaint Red Caboose Restaurant. Located in the heart of Amish farmland, the restaurant is a dining car with a view on one side of the Strasburg Railroad and the surrounding countryside. The other side of the car gives a view of a small gift shop where you can watch toy trains running through a lay-out. We enjoyed our sandwiches, went through the gift shop and then took a peek at the motel lobby - besides being a restaurant, the Red Caboose has several dozen train cars lined up outside in which you can spend the night! With a view tower to climb, a playground, and a barnyard of animals, the Red Caboose is the perfect place for train-loving kids. I wish I would have known about the place when my boys were little - they would have loved it. In fact, the Red Caboose has been around for quite a long time. Marty's grandmother told me that friends of her's spent their honeymoon at the Red Caboose!

More Goatie Photos

(Photos by Eli)

The Moon

(Photos by Eli)

Inspiration As I Clean

I was as surprised at the room before me as Miss Henderson had been by something about me. There was warmth and color and shine here: firelight gleaming on polished brass and the gray satin of pewter; firelight reflected on the well-scrubbed and waxed puncheon floor; the turkey reds and cobalt blues of what looked to be hand-loomed materials set off by old pine and cherry furniture. A bank of windows all across the back of the room let the outdoors in, with the winter landscape and the towering peaks like a gigantic mural.

-- Catherine Marshall, an excerpt from Christy

Steam-O-Rama 2011 - An Autumn Tradition