Pumpkin Pie

I had a request for my mom's Pumpkin Pie recipe, so here it is:

PUMPKIN PIE

Beat together in large bowl:

3 cups pumpkin (large can)
2 cups brown sugar
5 eggs
2 cups evaporated milk
1 tsp. salt
1/3 cup sugar
2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. ginger
1/4 tsp. nutmeg

Pour in 2 pie shells. (9 inch)
Bake in a 425 degree oven for 15 minutes, then turn heat down to 325 degrees.
Continue baking until set, about 35 - 40 minutes.

Check for doneness my inserting knife just off center. If it comes out clean, the pie is done.

You can use frozen pie crusts. Or, we prefer our own:

PIE CRUST

Stir together:
2 cups flour
1 tsp. salt

Cut in:
3/4 cup shortening (we use the butter flavor shortening)

Sprinkle with:
5 - 6 Tbsp. cold water, adding 1 Tbsp. at a time
Stir the water in with a fork, until the dough sticks together enough to be rolled out.

Roll out dough on a floured surface, put in two 9 inch pie plates.

After the pie is baked, cool on wire racks. Then keep in fridge. The pie is much better cold!

Enjoy!

(I do!)

Lobster trap

 

Do you know what this is? It's a lobster trap that we picked up at an auction.

Not real common in landlocked WV.

A little boy in the shop one day called it a "bad people trap".

Ha!

 

  

Snowman dishes

I picked these dishes up at a thrift store last summer, and tucked them away in my stash for future projects. The future is now so to speak! It's that time of year when anything & everything becomes a base for a snowman. A little paint. A little time. A whole new look.

I'm not sure what the dishes would have been used for originally. Baking? Serving?

I've been watch some cooking shows while I paint.
Shows like Chopped.
And Restaurant Impossible.
And Cutthroat Kitchen.

And the more I watch these shows, the more I realize how little I know about cooking!

I consider myself a pretty good cook.

Cook. Not chef.

Ahhh. Maybe that's the difference.

Let's just say I don't think I'll be competing on any of these shows anytime soon.

When Life Gives You Lemons...

 

Did you ever learn a new word or phrase, & then it seems like you hear it ALL the time?

 

That's the way I feel about this phrase. I don't remember hearing it, until I started carrying it in the shop. Now I not only hear it all the time, I also say it all the time!

I suppose it was always there, I just didn't notice it.

We're dealing with some big situations in our lives right now that are out of our control.

We live in the heart of the Marcellus Shale gas & oil drilling. We feel like we've been plucked out of our nice, quiet, peaceful countryside, and thrown down into the middle of an industrial zone.

That was bad enough.

We found out a few days ago that the plant George works in is shutting down at the end of this year.

Well.

It is what it is.

And we don't like it.
Not one little bit.

But, we're trying hard to find the bright side.
We are debt free.
We have a safety net.
We have a can do attitude.

We have each other.
And... we have a God who we have a deep faith in.

Things have a funny way of working out, and we believe they will this time too.

We plan to bring lots of new things into the shop. We need it to go from being a little extra money to a lot of extra money!

Another old saying applies here....

A Crock Surprise

See the crock on the left that says Enterprise? I have had it for a couple months or so in the shop. It was sort of hidden under a table.

I bought several crocks yesterday from a customer, and decided to display them all together in a new spot. When I reached under the table to pull out the Enterprise crock, I noticed it has something white all over it.

It was on the inside, but even more on the outside. Crystal like, and practically covering the whole thing. It looked like salt, but I wasn't sure.

I got a wet paper towel, and wiped it off. I got up my nerve, and tasted it, barely touching my tongue to a spot on my hand that had touched the white stuff. Yep. Definitely salt!

You can see a crack in the crock toward the top by the letter S. My guess is that this crock was used to make sauerkraut, which was made by layering cabbage and salt.

The salt must have soaked into the crack, and as the crock sat there under my table, it oozed out. Or grew. Or did whatever salt does.

It's a bit of a mystery to me. Why exactly did it happen? Did it only happen because the conditions were just right? What were those conditions? Will it happen again?

I guess time will tell!

Gossip bench

Are you old enough to recognize this?

 

I admit that I am.

 

It's a phone bench, AKA gossip bench.

 

Back in the day, before cordless phones and cell phones, most homes had one phone. Imagine! And that one phone was either attached to the wall, or had to stay close to it. I'm sure the young folks can hardly believe that. lol

 

The phone would sit on top of the desk part, the phone book would fit neatly inside. And the person would sit in the seat and gossip chat.

We picked this up at an auction, and I gave it the prim treatment. I forgot to take a before picture, but it was plain brown. The original seat must have gave way at some point. When we bought it, it had the piece of plywood you see in the photo for a seat. But, it was unfinished, just a plain piece of plywood.

This brings back memories of party lines, and long and short rings. And the days before answering machines. I remember many times when everyone was outside, either in the yard or garden. Through the open windows of the house, we would hear the phone ring. Someone would go running to the house to answer the phone. More often than not, the caller would hang up just as you were breathlessly running through the door.

Ahhh, the good ole days.

The 70's cupboard

I bought these 2 book cases at an auction. I know you're looking at it, and saying, "I only see one piece". It's actually 2 pieces, stacked on top of each other.

They were plain jane brown. And very 1970's looking.

I dubbed it the 70's cupboard.

And when I called it that on my facebook page, a friend from high school said, "what's wrong with the 70's?"

Why nothing, nothing at all!

We both graduated in '80. The 70's were some good times.

But the bookcase/cupboard? The 70's weren't doing it any favors.

I wasn't sure anything I did to it would help. I didn't want to put much more money in it.

I found a can of sorta bluish/greenish paint in my paint stash. I put one coat on the whole thing, then went over all of it with the orbital sander.

A coat of wax, (or was it varnish? I forget now what I did) and it was done.

Not bad, but I still wasn't sure anyone would want it. It got a decent response on facebook, but I still wasn't sure about it. I didn't bother putting a price on it, thinking I would just use it for display purposes.

Then someone sent me a message asking if I still had the 70's looking cupboard. "Yes I do", I said.

And within a month it was sold.

Shows how much I know about what people want!