I LOVE Fall

Reasons why I love Fall:

1) Fall weather and changing colors. These are some pictures from a nature walk I took a couple of weeks ago when the weather was still warm.

2) Season of my b-day. Thanks to everyone who sent a card or well wishes. I feel so loved!

3) Fall Decorations

4) Start of the celebration season....MWH b-day, anniversary, my b-day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's...whew. Need to get out those knitting needles.

I hope everyone's Fall is starting out well!

Food

Have we been doing any fun cooking lately??

Yes, of course....:)

Here's a few things we have done in the past couple of months:

Pasta, pasta, pasta....we made some more ravioli. This time with sausage filling. We also made some regular noodles that we dried. It is so fun to make your own pasta. And, it is so amazing to me that I can taste the eggs in the homemade pasta. YUM!

I made some more marinara sauce from Martha Stewart's recipe. This time I also put in some red bell peppers. This sauce is really easy and quick to make. I froze all of these jars for later use. With one of them I cooked down the sauce and we used it to make this very delicious pizza.

Our patio garden is coming to an end. Here are some of the vegetable we were able to harvest. We also had quite a few green beans. One of our tomato plants still wants to produce fruit. It had new flowers even with this cold weather we have had in the last week.

Lastly, I made this yummy cake for MWH's b-day. It was the second recipe in the dessert section of Martha's cookbook. The first recipe was for a drop cookie.

The latest new cooking thing that we have been doing is sauteing. We bought a cast iron skillet and have been using it a lot. We use it for pancakes, veggies, steaks, and lamb chops.

I am hungry now...haha.

Books

This past summer I read a lot more books than usual. All of them were so good, I thought I would write a little something about each one.

I read these two books at the beginning of the summer. MWH (my wonderful husband) and I had gone to see the movie Food, Inc. and had started to think more and more about the kinds of food we were eating and where it was coming from. Food, Inc. will totally cause a change in the way you think about food. It was a great movie that I recommend for everyone. These two books by Michael Pollan were also excellent. I especially like The Omnivore's Dilemma. MWH and I had been eating at home a lot more before reading these books, but we were still eating a lot of processed foods. Now, we stick with more local fresh foods and have learned so much about how different foods are made (yogurt, cheese, butter, buttermilk, bread, etc.). We have also started "putting up" some food for the winter months.

After reading the books above I moved on to: Julie and Julia by Julie Powell. I wanted to read the book before going to see the move...good idea. After seeing the movie MWH bought Julia Child's MTAOFC. I haven't used a recipe from it yet (we are still reading Martha Stewart's cookbook as well), but I read a few passages about lamb and Julia really lays it out there for you...just like she is having a conversation with you and telling you her cooking secrets.

Next was:

This book was soooo good. I really like Barbara Kingsolver's writing. Before this I had read her book The Poisonwood Bible, which was also very good. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is a story about Kingsolver and her family and how they made a pact to live for one year off of food that they either grew themselves or could get within a 100 mile radius of where they lived. She talks about heirloom vegetables, eating with the seasons, raising laying chickens and a flock of heritage turkeys, and there are excerpts and recipes written by her daughter for different seasons of the year. Just a great and fast read. Now I want to have my own little spot of land where I could do the same thing.

After all those food related books, I had to switch to some fiction.

This was and still is one of my all time favorite books. The emotion and story of the characters is so real and just seems to speak to me. The first time I read it I just cried and cried. I did shed some tears again this time. Now I need to convince MWH to go see the movie with me.

This is what I am currently reading:

A gift from MWH.

This is the first book in the Sookie Stackhouse series of novels by Charlaine Harris. The HBO series True Blood, which is also very very good, is based on these novels. Only just started, but so far a good read.

Updates

Has it really been so long since I last wrote??

Lots of little updates / thoughts in the next couple of posts. I have just been busy with normal life stuff lately.

Can you believe tomorrow is October? I've already been thinking of Holiday gifts. :)

The Story of Kaya

Kaya is a beautiful, smart, funny, and energetic dog. She is also a dog who is dominant and a little aggressive and very stubborn. I am sad to say that she was not the dog for me and we made the decision yesterday to bring her back to the family that we go her from. She is already in a new home with two parents and kids and I hope she is so very happy.

Everything with Kaya started out well. She was going potty outside and playing with her toys. We went on some long walks and she was getting use to her kennel. I guess the red flags that she may not be the dog for our family started very early on, even before we got her, but how can you not love a puppy? and think that you can not mold it? Well for Kaya being a dominant dog, she needed a dominant leader and that is something I was failing at again and again. Kaya was mouthing a lot and it seemed the only way she interacted with us was by chewing our hands and biting our ankles and clothes. We were able to play ball with her a little but mostly it was a lot of biting, especially for me. We think that she may have been taken away from her mother too soon and didn't learn some basic dog things about biting, playing, and more importantly obedience. It was going to take a lot of training and constant vigilance to keep her from asserting herself and trying to get higher in the pack order. On Saturday, my husband worked with her a lot and he had a break through where he thought it was going to work. Sunday morning was not any better for me, however, and it got to the point where Kaya started mounting and humping my arm as a sign of dominance.

Making the decision to bring her back was one of the most awful things I have ever had to do. So many things went through my head.

I am failing Kaya. We decided to care for this life and I am abandoning her. What is wrong with me that I can't interact or deal with an 8 week old, 12 lb puppy? Why is it so hard for me? Will I ever be able to have a dog? Will I ever be able to have a child? Did I give up to early?

Overall my gut tells me that Kaya was a great puppy and is going to be a great dog, but she just wasn't the dog for me and it would not have been fair to her or me or our family to keep her. This whole last week my stomach has been tied in knots, I haven't been able to eat very well, and I have just had bad feelings. I don't think having a puppy is supposed to make you feel that way. I am who I am, and Kaya is who she is. I don't think I have cried this many days or this hard in a very long time, if ever.

This morning I am thinking of Kaya and missing her a little. I really did love her in some way and she touched my life. I hope she is happy with her new family and continues to be a happy dog.