Depressing Saturday

Karen and Ray were on the road by 0830 and then we left to take Sherrie to the airport a few hours later. We made one quick trip through Cowpens so she could see what it was. Next week is going to be lonely.

Most Wanted

Jeff has a pistol range down in the back and every year on the Friday after Thanksgiving we go down and do some target shooting. Steve loves to shoot and has an assortment of vintage guns from WWII and so forth. And Karen is really good also!

She always has the best ideas for the annual group picture. Last year we took pictures of everyone sitting on the tractor with our croquet mallets. Now after seeing the picture of Jeff's version of a hot dog bonfire, we don't want you to get the idea we are a bunch of rednecks but a picture is worth a thousand words. By the way we had the camera on a timer!





Steve left to go down to Charleston for the week-end. Jeff the pyromaniac with Rays help built a little fire out in the driveway and the seven of us (Keeshia and Sadie included) sat in our chairs around it. I'm sure the neighbors think we are nuts!

Happy Thanksgiving!

This year we girls did it right. We made enough of the food ahead of time that we didn't spend all day in the kitchen. Most of the afternoon we spent out in the yard watching the guys fry the turkeys. Everybody was a little tired from last night. After a wonderful dinner we all collapsed in the living room and watched a movie! Wonderful day spent with wonderful friends!

Turkey Frier Set-Up

The Chef's

Garage turned TV Room

Karen and Sherrie

Sherrie and her friend The Sadie Lady

Sadie fell in love with Steve this year!

Thanksgiving Eve

We all slept in a little this morning, then Sherrie and I started making appetizers (beefy cheese dip and crab dip), pumpkin pie and a cherry pie. She and Jeff hung the pictures we picked up yesterday. Jeff worked on getting the tables moved down to the backyard and running errands to town for stuff we forgot yesterday. Steve got here around one. We were still chopping stuff for gumbo and roped him into slicing all the cheese to go with the sausage Jeff was going to cook on the grill. Ray and Karen showed up around four. The three guys finished carrying stuff down to the back. The evening was a blast, we had a great time and hope to do it again next year. Several neighbors and their kids came. Judy and her mother came down also. I was so glad that Karen, Ray and Steve finally got to meet Sherrie, they've heard me talk about her for years. Here's a few pictures from the evening.

The wind started picking up during the afternoon and we thought we would have to cancel the bonfire. But by 7pm it had died down. I was up at the house directing someone down to the back when Jeff lit the fire. All I remember was seeing a big swoosh and the whole back yard lighting up. That's Jeff standing by it with the little bucket of water. We had to build a little fire off to the side so the kids could roast their hot dogs.



Finally the fire died down enough that we were able to sit around it!

Shopped Till We Dropped

Thank-goodness we canceled the trip to Gatlinburg. We started out around 0930 this morning and didn't get home till after 1600. The three (yes Sadie always goes with me) of us piled in the Subaru. First stop was Hobby Lobby in Spartanburg. Jeff told me if I didn't hang some pictures on the walls before Thanksgiving he was going to go around the house and start putting pictures up with scotch tape. Last week we gathered up all the large prints we've collected over the years and the four oil paintings we bought in Paris (in May of 06) and I took them to be framed.

Today only the horse pictures are ready, imagine that! But, it will please Jeff to have a few things on the wall. One horse picture is going above the black wrought iron bed in the guest room. The other one is a picture done by Orren Mixer, called Legends of the Breed. Orren Mixer has been known for his paintings of American Quarter Horses. I got this print from AQHA many years ago. It has three horses (just the heads) on it: King, Wimpy and Leo. Leo is Skipper's great-great-great grandpa and Peanut goes back to Leo and Wimpy. This one is going to hang in at the end entry hall where you come in the back door.

The Secretariat picture is going in the living room, to hang above an old antique table I found somewhere along the way. The photo was taken after he won the Belmont Stakes and thus the Triple Crown in 1973. The race is also know as The Final Jewel of the Triple Crown series. (The Derby is The Run for the Roses, the Preakness is the Middle Jewel). Only 11 horses have won the Triple Crown and Secretariat won the Belmont by 31 lengths. I get chills and tears whenever I listen to the live radio broadcast of that race, unbelievable!! In 1973 he was featured on the covers of Time, Newsweek and Sports Illustrated in the same week. A few years ago I read an article about Secretariat and it said a group of MIT scientists entered his vital statistics into a computer and it told them he was not possible! I've been in love with him since I was 12 years old and he captured the hearts of Americans and horse lovers throughout the world.

While we were over near the mall trying to find a place to get a replacement battery we made the mistake of asking some guys sitting at a bus stop for directions and the next thing we know the crazy man is walking up to the car asking us for money. Sadie did not like it and told him about it! He didn't come much closer, I threw two dollars out the window and we got out of there.

Last stop of the day was to get stuff so Sherrie could teach me how she makes her meatloaf and it was great!

Landrum, NC

Today Sherrie and I went up to Landrum. We stopped in The Hare and Hound for lunch and were able to sit outside on the patio. It was a beautiful afternoon in the 70's. Did some shopping in town, tried to find a new battery for her camera, and then stopped in The Hayrack to pick up some wormer for the horses. Of course The Sadie Lady went with us.

Jeff took us to dinner at the Mexican Restaurant in Chesnee. We spent the time talking about everything we have left to do for tomorrow and decided to trash the idea about driving over to Gatlinburg. Tomorrow night after Ray and Karen get in we're having a bonfire/hotdog roast way down in the back yard near the creek. Also invited the neighbors (Jimmy, Robin, Christy, Brian and all the kids). This will be the first time they have all been down to our place.

Jeff and Sherrie tried hard to convince me it was okay to serve boxed wine down by the bonfire with all the appetizers we're making on Wednesday. It didn't work. I just can't imagine serving boxed wine to the neighbors we just recently met. My plan for a hotdog roast was to get screw off cap wine, which seemed as redneck as the boxed kind. We laughed till we cried arguing the points of boxed wine versus screw off cap wine. Finally they decided they weren't going to convince me and so screw off cap wine is what we're getting and hoping that our first impression on the neighbors is a little less redneck than serving wine in a box!

Chimney Rock, NC

Chimney Rock Park, NC

Today we loaded up in the Chevelle and headed for Chimney Rock (all the beautiful scenes from Last of the Mohicans were filmed there, and also Dirty Dancing .) It's about an hour from our house and the foliage color is at it's peak this week. We walked out to the falls then had a quick lunch back at the car. Spent a little time walking through the shops in town. We were thinking about going to Bat Cave but Jeff and I have never been there and didn't know exactly where it was. I had the misfortune of asking one of the clerks in a shop, "What is at the Bat Cave?" She looked at me kind of odd and said, "Bats," which Sherrie promptly replied, "She doesn't get out much and we have to take her back in an hour!"

I love this picture of Sherrie with the falls in the background

Sadie, Stacey and Sherrie

Pool that runs off over the falls

Picnic Lunch: Sadie Always has Her Own Chair

Sherrie's Here for a Visit

Every year we have a Thanksgiving get together at our house. Ray, Karen and Brian always come from Virginia Beach. Steve comes up from Sumter, the kids come from Charleston and then sometimes there are a few more. Susan and Tony came last year but her brother Guiddo is getting married so then can't make it this year. This is going to be a great year. Sherrie is coming from Missouri.

Sadie and I picked her up from the airport this afternoon. Had to show her the outside stuff (barn, cabin, horse barn, horses, garden, etc.) before going in the house. The house is just a house! I have this advertisement for Southern States horse products on the frig, it says, "If you've ever built an extension on your barn instead of your house, then you're our kind of people!" And I guess we are since the stall barn got an extension before we did much of anything else.

Reunion! Sherrie and Skipper haven't seen each other in 8 years!

Got Mozzarella!

I've got mozzarella made with dry milk powder! Now it doesn't taste exactly like the mozzarella you buy at the store, but it is mozzarella. A little rubbery and I think I heated it up too long in the stretching phase. I gave Sadie a bite and she spit it out. Jeff wasn't quite so rude. He didn't spit it out, but I noticed he didn't eat but two pieces of my mozzarella balls rolled in basil and olive oil. It looks like more practice is needed, but at least after yesterday's disaster I have cheese!

Disastrous Mozzarella!

Well the first attempt at homemade mozzarella appears to be a disaster. The instructions say you can use store bought milk. So I tried it with Wal-Mart's Great Value brand. I ended up with something that looked like Ricotta and made my kitchen, towels and hands smell like sour milk. Yuck! The instructions also say that you cannot use ultra-pasteurized milk. The milk jug doesn't say ultra-pasteurized, but I have noticed in the last year or so that all the cream, half-and-half and organic milk cartons in the grocery store are labeled ultra-pasteurized.

I'm not going to give up yet, the instructions say if you have trouble with store bought milk to make a gallon using dry milk powder. I don't know how I got so lucky to marry a man who supports all my crazy schemes, but he just ran off to the store to get some dry milk powder while I clean up this mess I have in the kitchen!

Great Birthday Present

I didn't get a goat for my birthday, but this cute little thing is one of the goats at Heidi's place in Maienfeld Switzerland. It was taken on our trip there in May of 2006.

Jeff with Heidi's goats.

I don't know why I exactly got interested in cheesemaking, but I remember reading Heidi when I was a little girl. I think the description of her sitting on a rock with her goats overlooking the Swiss mountains drinking her warm milk and eating her cheese curds left an image on me. Or maybe it was all the stories my Grandma Wagenknecht told me about her goats. Uncle Emery had an ulcer and the recommended treatment at the time was to drink goat milk. Johnny and Edna had the land so they bought some goats and milked them for Emery. I don't know if she ever made cheese, but she sure had some memorable moments with her goats.

When I was in my twenties I bought a book about cheesemaking. At that time there was no Internet and trying to find a place to buy cultures and rennet, building a press and getting cheese molds must have seemed near impossible. And I remember the book suggested making yogurt cheese as the first step. Yogurt cheese didn't sound all that good to me and the whole book sounded like a lot of work. So it ended up on a shelf. I wish I could find it now, but I imagine it got sold or lost along the way leading up to my 47th birthday.

I was reading a magazine a few weeks ago and the feature article was about home cheesemaking. The article described the explosive growth in artesian cheesemaking in the United States, it included a few recipes and a table describing the various types of cheeses (cow, goat and sheep), their characteristics and differences. And there at the end of the article was a web site that sold "cheesemaking kits" for the beginner. Jeff's comment was, "Don't you think that sounds like something you should try after you retire?"

I was totally surprised when my birthday present was a Mozzarella Cheesemaking Kit. So here's to you Heidi!

Me and Heidi's Goats