Odds & ends

Hello everyone!  I've had a busy couple weeks, between traveling to visit family and trying to squeeze every moment out of this Indian summer weather here in central Iowa.  I've got some exciting (or at least exciting to nerdy ol' me) things to share with you all, but I don't have the time or energy to type it all out in a coherrent way.  So if it's OK, I'm just going to share a few odds & ends of random happenings in our household.

One of the great benefits of keeping a blog is that I can go back and see what we were up to a year ago.  I noticed that my hubby had found a giant hen-of-the-woods mushroom last year at this time.  It was so huge, in fact, that he ended up cutting it into pieces and putting it in the freezer.  So all winter, we treated ourselves to mushroom omelets on cold mornings.  These mushrooms are the perfect compliment to eggs.

My husband went back to his favorite mushroom spot.  And he found another mushroom, although not quite as big as the one he found last year.  But there's still enough to freeze for future use. 

Isn't it a beauty?

I've also been making bi-weekly trips to two local apple orchards this fall:  Berry Patch Farm in Nevada and Center Grove Orchard in Cambridge.  I buy the biggest bag of Honeycrisp apples they offer, and I've been eating these like candy.  I also buy a bag of baking apples -- my favorite are Jonathans -- and I've been making cinnamon apple sauce and apple butter on the weekends.  I've decided the apples are my favorite fruit to bake with.  So versatile.

And here's a random shot of my backyard garden, just for my own future reference.  Everything is so green thanks to this cooler fall weather.

OK...so that's all the writing my overwhelmed brain can handle right now.  I'm off to relax for the evening.