In a pear tree

I wasn't ready to put my canning supplies away for the winter. I've had my eye on a recipe for pear butter, so I thought I'd give it a try while pears were still in season. I found this recipe in a cookbook called "175 Best Jams, Jellies, Marmalades and Other Soft Spreads."

The recipe calls for a combination of pears and Granny Smith apples. I made it just like apple butter, simmering it over a stove until the fruit got mushy. Then I pushed the mixture through a fine sieve, put it back on the stove, added some nutmeg and simmered it until the spread was almost silky in texture.

I was so happy with the end result. The pear butter looks beautiful in the jars, and the taste is wonderful, almost like honey. It's a nice change from the apple butter, and you can really taste the brightness of the pears, since the flavor isn't masked by cinnamon.

I hope to find time to make a few more jars of this before Christmas. It would make a great gift or stocking stuffer. Plus, I have a feeling I'll be keeping these jars for myself :)

Thanksgiving from scratch

My husband and I stayed home for Thanksgiving this year, so I took charge of cooking our holiday meal. I started two days in advance with the pie crusts. Then last night, I made the cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes and two pies.

I'm pretty proud of myself for making everything from scratch, especially when I saw all the convenience foods in the grocery store while I was doing my Thanksgiving shopping. It's amazing that nowadays you don't even have to peel a potato.

Since I knew I had a lot of peeling to do, I recently broke down and replaced the terrible vegetable peeler I received as a wedding gift and invested in an Oxo peeler from Amazon.com. So glad I made the purchase. I bet it took an hour off my cooking time.

I stuck to a traditional Thanksgiving menu this year.

On my plate:

• Turkey, of course.
• Mushroom stuffing
• Cranberry-apple sauce
• Pioneer Woman's Creamy Mashed Potatoes
• Fancy green bean casserole, recipe from Taste of Home magazine
• Maple sweet potatoes with marshmallows, recipe from Better Homes and Gardens

I also made my favorite dinner rolls. (Yes, from scratch. I've got the flour-dusted clothes to prove it.)

My husband snapped a few pictures of me at work last night, looking up recipes on my netbook. Our kitchen is still ceiling-less. But at least the leak is fixed. Got to love the 1960s-style custom-made cabinets. Classy, eh?

If you're wondering, that green-and-gold pattern under the kitchen counter is carpet. That's right. Floor-to-countertop carpet. We still have the 1960s carpet in the kitchen, because we're afraid of seeing what the 1900s tile looks like underneath.

I also made two pies for Thanksgiving: pecan and pumpkin. My husband loves pecan, and I crave pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving. I was so excited when I pulled the pecan pie out of the oven. It looked wonderful!

But I was horrified when we cut into the pie. It didn't set!!! That didn't stop us from eating it, however.

I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving with your friends and family. I'm thankful to live in a country where I have a fridge full of food, a house of my own, a great job and a family that supports all my goofy endeavors -- including staying up past midnight to peel potatoes.

Martha Mondays: Birdfeeders

Maybe it's because as I get older, I start to appreciate the simpler things in life. Or maybe it's because I'm proud of having my own backyard, or because my husband is an avid outdoorsman. But over the last couple years, I've developed a fascination with bird-watching.

We have several towering pine trees in our backyard, planted by an elderly couple who lived in the home for 40 years before selling it to us. The family had a summer home in the Ozarks, and every year, the husband planted a pine tree that he brought back from Missouri in his Iowa backyard. The pine trees look a little odd in our neighborhood of decidious oaks and maples. But they attract all kinds of birds, including the cardinal that appears in my profile pick. He and a female cardinal return to our backyard every spring and attempt to nest in our trellis. They always get scared off, however, either by our comings-and-goings or by the squirrels.

So I was thrilled to see this week's Martha Mondays assignment, picked by Brette over at Martha and Me. It's a homemade bird feeder, made from suet (beef fat) and birdseeds, pressed into a mold of some sort.

When I told my husband I needed to find a local meat locker to buy the suet, he asked, "Can't you just use lard?" After a quick Google search, sure enough, we discovered that lard is a suitable replacement for the beef suet in birdseed mixes, although I think the birds may still prefer the suet.

This was probably the easiest Martha Mondays project yet. I just heated the lard up in the microwave for 20 seconds, then mixed in the wild birdseed, unsalted peanuts and dried cranberries. (It was almost like making granola!) I pressed the gloppy mix into plastic cups that have been hiding in the back of our cupboards since our wedding reception (six years ago!). Then, as instructed, I stuck twine into the center and put the molds in the freezer over night.

I had to cut the plastic cup to release the frozen birdseed "feeder" inside. The end product looks "semi-professional," I think.

Unfortunately, it only took a few minutes at room temperature for the seeds to start falling off the feeder. Then I gave the twine a little tug, and the feeder collasped into pieces. I'm thinking these feeders need to be outdoors in the frozen temperatures to work. I plan to keep them in the freezer until it dips back to Artic temps here in central Iowa, then place them out on my clothes lines to see if the birds take a nibble.

On a funny side note, my birdfeeder project inspired my husband to make his own "green" bird feeder. It's made from an old peanut jar and a peanut butter lid. He got the idea from a recent issue of Workshop magazine.


Thanks for another fun project. I'm sure the birds will appreciate it, too!