Seeing New York: The Adirondack Mountains

A few months ago we decided to a vacation. My mother-in-law wanted my husband and I to go with them to New York. Her sister lives up there and she wanted us to come see everyone, go to the state fair, and see the sights.

Well, on Wednesday we left Houston and flew to New York. It was a long flight. Not as long as our flight for our honeymoon to Europe, but still long. We left at 10:00 Houston time and after a layover in Atlanta, we got in New York around 5:00.

Thursday morning I got up bright and early. Now mind you, I'm still on Houston time, so I work up at 6:00 am. Finally after showering and getting the gang ready, we loaded the car up with our snacks (because if the women in this group doesn't eat in a timely manner we get crancky. Actually our blood sugar drops and we start to starve to death.), and hit the road.

We drove two hours north from Syracuse, New York to Old Forge/ The Adirondack Mountains. The drive was beautiful. We came at a good time to see the start of "the changing of the leaves". The trees started to turn red and yellow all along the way. 

We finally reached out destination and it was time to eat lunch. :) So we ate at a place called Walt's Diner.

I had the burger and it was ok. I found out that the North has no idea how to make a good glass of ice tea. Sorry guys, but the south can make one good glass of tea (even if it's unsweet).

Then we walked around the town and did a little sight seeing. Here are some pictures of the town.

This is a cute little yellow light house and boat across the lake.

A duck swimming near us on the lake.

My father-in-law sitting at the table. (The hubby took this one).

This was our dessert, bread pudding.

A picture of the town.

The hubby trying on hat in the hardware store.

Me trying on a hat.

They have ice shoes. We couldn't believe it. It was kind of cool to see these for sale. The spikes were sharp too.

Snow shoes....... Never saw these before.

Look canoes!!

Then we drove further north and stopped at a lake called Fourth Lake. They were numbered 1-8.

From left to right: Aunt-in-law, Mom-in-law- & Dad-in-law

I thought this one was beautiful with the sailboat in the back by the mountain.

Then we drove a little further north to the Adirondack Mountains. While we were driving through the mountains we stopped at this place called Buttermilk Falls. I got the opportunity to play with my new camera and change the aperture of the camera to catch the silky fluid affect. Check it out.

This isn't smoke or fog. It's actually the mist.

It's a baby pinecone.

On our way home from Buttermilk Falls, we passed this lake. Not sure of the name of it, but it was too beautiful at sunset to pass and not take a picture.

That's it for Thursday.

DIY: Saving the tomatoes in the garden!!

Do you have tomatoes in your garden?

Have you lost any of your tomatoes to birds picking them to death?

So how do you save your tomatoes? 

Well, that's where this post comes in.

I heard that if you take red plastic easter eggs and put them in your garden, that will detour the birds from pecking at your tomatoes. It tricks the birds into thinking that they are tomatoes and so the birds will peck at the eggs. Once the birds realize that they aren't pecking at a tomato, the birds leave alone the real tomatoes. 

Since we have a garden this year, I thought, I have to try this and see if it works. I decided to try it with wood balls instead of easter eggs. So one day after work I went to the hardware store to get some wood balls that were a little bigger than an inch a cross. I also bought some red spray paint to color them like tomatoes.

So I sprayed them red with several coats to make sure there wasn't any wood showing. I used Krylon Gloss Cherry Red spray paint. I let them dry for about 5 or 10 minutes, to make sure it was really dry, before spraying the bottom of the balls.

And really that's it. After I finished painting them and I felt like I had coated them well, I placed them in the garden. I painted six of them and then just randomly laid them in the garden bed near the tomatoes.

Here are the tomatoes growing in our garden. These are the Big Boy tomatoes.

These are our grape tomatoes.

This is our cantaloupe that is growing.

These are my herbs. I have basil, parsley, rosemary, and cilantro.

My basil. I absolutely love basil. It smells so wonderful and it's great when you use fresh basil in your dishes too.

We have worms.... in the garden.

The other day I went out to our garden to pick some fresh tomatoes. We had three plants growing, but one died. I don't know why, but one plant just didn't make it. The other two are grape tomatoes and better bush.

I'm so excited about our garden. I love everyday going out and picking the fresh veggies that are growing and watching what we produce. I can see now why farmers farm. It's an amazing process. The Lord created an amazing process with the fruit, soil, sunlight, and love.

Even though we are only growing on a small scale, it's still so exciting to wait for the plants to produce delicious and healthy foods.

One day the Hubby and I were driving around Texas and on our way home, we took some back roads. As we were traveling through the small towns there were fields and fields of corn. For some reason it was interesting to see it so close to home. I always thought our produce came from other places  (like other states or even countries), but yet there was corn just a couple of hundred of miles from my home.

But back to our garden. After I had picked some cherry tomatoes, I brought them into the house and set them on the counter. I walked off to go take care of something and when I came back I looked at them sitting there and noticed there was a small little worm crawling on the outside of one that was "bad".

I had left the tomato on the counter over night and when I got home from work the next day, the little guy was out again crawling around but this time he was black. It was kind of cool looking to see how he changed colors in a day.

These are from our garden that I picked over several days. The green one fell off as I was getting a nice red juicy one.

Can you smell that? It's cream cheese banana nut bread in the oven.

After I made sweet and sour chicken for dinner the other night. I also made banana nut bread for dessert. In fact the recipe made two loaves. I haven't made it in a very long time!!! I think I made once when I was a freshman in high school.

Mom helped me make it and then we took it to some shut ins from church. I remember walking in her house and handing her the loaf of bread. She looked at me and said, "Did you make this? It smells nice!" It was at that moment that I realized the power of food and the act of kindness to people who needed visitors while not being able to get out every day like we do.

I got the recipe from here. It looks like she got it from Southern Living.

There's no greater smell than that of bread, cookies, or a good pie baking in the oven.

When this one was cooking, I could smell it in the living room and I just wanted to go to the oven and just pull a piece out and start eating it.

This is a fool proof recipe. If you do what it says, you can't go wrong. This will definitely be my go to recipe for banana nut bread. The cream cheese really helps add a little extra oomph!!

*I got the pictures from her site as well. The only picture I had was a downward angle of them sitting on the island. These were much prettier.

Cream Cheese Banana Nut Bread - Southern Living

Cream Cheese Banana Nut Bread

***Makes 2 loaves***

3/4 c. butter, softened
1 (8 oz.) pkg. cream cheese, softened
2 c. sugar
2 large eggs
3 c. all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 cups mashed bananas (about 4 medium bananas)
1 cup roughly chopped pecans, toasted
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

Beat butter and cream cheese at medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy. Gradually add sugar, beating until light and fluffy. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating just until blended after each addition.

Combine flour and next 3 ingredients; gradually add to butter mixture, beating at low speed just until blended. Stir in bananas, pecans, and vanillla. Spoon batter into 2 greased and floured 8x4 inch loafpans.

Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour or until a long wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean and sides pull away from pan, shielding with aluminum foil last 15 minutes to prevent browning, if necessary.

(I found that after one hour, my banana bread wasn't completely cooked through.  I ended up baking it for an extra 10-15 minutes.)

Cool bread in pans on wire racks for 10 minutes. Remove from pans, and cool 30 minutes on wire racks before slicing.

Source: Southern Living magazine

*I like to dump my cakes/ breads out immediately after cooking. Every time I let them sit for a few minutes and then try to dump them out, they stick to the pan and never just fall out like they should.

Asian Delight: Sweet and Sour Chicken

Last night for dinner I made some really good sweet and sour chicken. I normally don't to asian, except for stir-fry because it's easy and not hard to mess up, but this time I decided to try it out.

If you have time to make dinner from scratch it's worth the try. Let me just say this, I get home from work around 2:30-3:00ish and didn't start dinner until about 4:30-5:00ish. We leave for church on Wednesday around 7:10 (services start at 7:30). So, I had plenty of time to cut my chicken, fry it in oil, and then finish it off by baking it in the oven for 30 minutes.

So if I had time to do that, oh and unload the dishwasher and load it back, you can make this meal too. It's was fast, easy, fun, and delicious. Had I had all the stuff to make homemade egg rolls I would have done that too. I think that would have completed the meal. But in reality if I had had some in the freezer I would have just heated them up instead of making some.

I got the recipe here. She got it from Mels Kitchen Cafe (not sure who or where. she didn't have a link on her site). I also pulled the picture from her site since I didn't get a chance to take any of my dinner. But it looked just like this.

Source

Sweet and Sour Chicken

Chicken Breading:
3-5 chicken breast
salt and pepper
1 cup cornstarch
2 eggs, beaten
1/3 cup canola oil

Rinse chicken, trim off fat or extras and then cut into 1 inch cubes. season with salt and pepper. Dip chicken into cornstarch and coat all the way and then into eggs. Heat oil in large skillet. Cook chicken until browned. Place in baking dish. 3 chicken breasts can be in a 9x9 but 5 chicken breasts fits better in a 9x13.

Sauce:
3/4 cups white sugar
4 Tablespoons ketchup

1/2 cup white distilled vinegar

1 Tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon garlic salt

Whisk until smooth. Then pour evenly over chicken. Turn chicken so the sauce gets on both sides and then put in the oven at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. turn chicken and then cook for 15 more minutes.

*On the sauce stage: I ended up putting the chicken in the bowl with the sauce and mixing it in there to make sure it was nicely coated. Then I poured it into my dish.
**I also cut 3 chicken breasts and ended up using a 9x13 to make sure they laid evenly in the dish.

I also cooked rice and put this over it and it turned out to be a nice dish!! I hope you enjoy it as much as we did.