Brussel Sprouts geniuses, I tell you!

You are ALL geniuses!


I had never seen brussel sprouts 'on the vine' before. Once they are removed from their stalk, they look amazingly like a human spine! creepy

And, does anyone have a recipe that makes them taste good? You all seem to like them. We roasted them in the oven with olive oil and sea salt. Everything's supposed to taste good roasted with olive oil and sea salt.

Yeah, not so much with brussel sprouts. (Or kale, for that matter.)

I do like my brother's idea - wrapped in bacon and cooked in butter.

Isn't that kind of like the old joke 'how to smoke a carp'? If I recall correctly, it involved exacting instructions for putting the carp on the cedar shingle and precise details on the smoking process. At the end of the smoking, you 'throw away the carp and eat the shingle'.

Can we throw away the brussel sprouts and eat the bacon and butter? YUM!

What is this?

We've had plenty of interesting veg from the CSA lately.



Bonus points to anyone who can identify this skeleton.

Blue Fest

I have managed to get a few things knitted lately.

A sampling of recently finished objects, all in blue:


Plain vanilla socks.

I dyed the yarn just before our trip out west this summer. I could have made these socks identical twins, but I went for the definitely fraternal twins.

Ain't it fun havin' weirdo socks sometimes?



Wooly camping sleeping socks for Bekky, who tolerated sleeping in a tent in 30 degree temps in the high Rockies this summer.


The yarn for her socks was spindled on that trip.






Some handspun, knitted fingerless mitts for Girl of the House.







There is one more finished sweater, but I'm hoping the recipient will model it for me when I see her this weekend.

Remember our potatoes?

The potatoes growing on our deck?
With the beautifully colored flowers?



We harvested in mid September.

Our yield was approximately 18 pounds of wildly colored potatoes. White, yellow, red, and blue.







The red ones are actually pinkish throughout the flesh. Kinda freaky.










And the blue ones make tasty mashed potatoes, once you get your mind wrapped around the color.

Definitely an eye-opener.






I think it's an experiment worth repeating next summer.

Otters!

We saw otters this past weekend!

Real, live otters in the wild. Awesome!

It was a family of three otters, catching and gobbling up trout in the Temperance River. It was a treat to watch them frolicking.



Over the MEA school break, we headed north to Temperance River State Park.



We needed to get our fall fix of Lake Superior.










We arrived on Thursday afternoon, in the drizzling rain. The weather was actually 10 degrees warmer than it was at home. Sweet!


This was the view from our campsite high on the bluff over Lake Superior.





We hiked,











played on the beach

(notice a certain similarity in the rock skipping posture?)






and had a nice, though short, fire. The drizzle drove us into the camper earlier than we had hoped, but we spent the remainder of the evening in the camper playing three handed cribbage.


Saturday dawned clear and bright. After a big breakfast, we spent more time on the beach.








We headed home in the late afternoon after enjoying the sunny shores (and the otters!)