Grandma's Fruit Cake

So, my grandma Helen makes the best fruitcake on earth. No really, I mean it. I know - I know - Fruitcake is disgusting and is most often the gift that keeps for decades (because it never gets eaten - not to mention it can also be used as a weapon). Not the case with grandma Helen's fruitcake.

Grandma's fruitcake is moist, full of nuts and fruit that you can actually eat. None of those green candied pysudo-fruit-like-plastic-tasting-bits-of-polyester nuggets.


Raisins (and/or craisins), pecans, pineapple bits, marachino cherries - (ok, so what the cherrys are candied and will probably take longer to digest than hubba-bubba-bubble gum)- they're good for you!

Pumpkin based mix (canned pumpkin of course- we won't revisit the earlier pumpkin disaster when I used a REAL freakin' pumpkin ok?). Tons of sugar, eggs and oil. . . You know - all the things that are good for your metabolism and cholesterol levels.


Then the fruitcakes are slathered with orange marmolade after they are baked (grandma usually uses apple butter). Again, pour yourself a tall glass of ice cold milk and grab a fork.


Seriously, if you're gonna blow what ever diet you're pretending to be on... this is worth that first step into the abyss where you keep all of your stretchy pants and other clothing items purchased at Seattle Tent & Awning.


Ohhhh, I ate too much. It hurts!

Christmas Baking

Multi-layer morsels of buttery crust, raspberry and cream cheese filling covered in melted semi-sweet chocolate. Yum!

Gooooey Goodness

Dana's gonna be totally pissed that I put her photo in here.

Scoring the chocolate. . . You KNOW we had to sample the goods. Yep, it is good enough to share for christmas. Gee, I hope we're able to save some.

Ok, well the first piece was awesome. The second one even better. Downing a glass of ice cold milk... Oh yeah, and another piece of raspberry - cream cheese CRACK. Oh the hell with christmas baking. . . Lets just call it DINNER !!!

Home Made Pumpkin Pie - Never Again

Since Dana recently taught me how to make pie crust, I think that I can just about tackle anything in a pie shell. Clearly, there is a learning curve, and I'm about to skid out of control.

I started with a great looking sugar pumpkin that I found at the Stanwood Pumpkin Patch. You know the place - across from the Stanwood Park-n-ride, the one with the really cool pumpkin shed, all of the sunflowers and varied types and sizes of pumpkins and gourds.

I Started out by cutting the pumpking in half, saving the seeds for baking.

Then, I baked the pumpkin halves for the required time. Scooped out and processed the pumpkin meat, adding all of the spices and other ingredients called for. . . .

I then made a great home made crust. I was totally excited . . . this was looking like a great pie and I couldn't wait for it to be done. I was soooo ready to stuff myself with a really huge slice covered in whipping cream . . .

It came out of the oven smelling so great. However, I wasn't so sure about how the filling came out . . . sort of dappled. You know - the store bought pies seem to be more consistent in color, and a bit darker as well. At any rate, I cut just a sliver and piled on a huge portion of whipped cream.

The whipped cream was awesome.

However, the pumpkin pie was the worst tasting mouthful of stringy, squashy, non-pumpkin pie tasting crap I've ever tasted. It was absoultely disgusting and NOT what pumpkin pie should taste like.

I won't be trying THIS again any time soon. In fact, it was so terrible, it almost ruined pumpkin pie for me entirely.

My advise? GO TO COSTCO. They have great pumpkin pies!!

Day at Iverson Beach

Celia, Joe, Dana & Robbie. . . and Bailey

Pass the berries please. . .

We were beginning to wonder why it was that the blackberry patch above the house had tons of huge ripe berries, and the enormous blackberry patch down below the house was almost bare execpt way up top where only the birds can reach..... now we know why!

About 9:30 Sunday morning this little one was munching away on the berries. I'm SURE her tongue was purple! Then. . . she spotted her competition . . .

A family of racoons had the same idea for breakfast.


Excuse me... I was here first.
Yeah, but we LIVE here...


Fine! We'll share.

Afternoon Squaaa-aaaack !!!

About 7:30, Saturday evening, there were about 5 eagles swooping over the house screeching like there was no tomorrow. . . not sure what their problem was. Eventually, three flew left and two flew right. Must have been a turf dispute of some sort.

Blackberry Pie

Time to Pick . . . I mean, you can't let them ALL go to the birds can you?

After Dana helped me with the cherry pie.. I figured I could do one on my own. Trust me, there were 10,000 OTHER things I needed to be doing..... things MUCH more important than making pie. However, I'm all about priorities. HA!

It begged for vanilla ice cream. No really, I heard it!!

Cherry Pie Saturday

From Nancy's tree to our waistlines. No splenda!

This is my first pie EVER... Of course, Dana had to help out. I was completely intimidated by crust.

Ok.. I don't know what I was so worried about. Pie crust was acutally pretty easy.

tasty!!!

Thunder Sky

Friday night thunder clouds... lots of noise, no rain drops.
Tomorrow 's gonna be 90 degrees

The Cabins at Cama Beach

Cama Beach State Park is on the southwest shore of Camano Island facing Saratoga Passage.

Barb's Visit

Barb & Dana relaxing at the bulkhead

Drying kelp. Hmmmm..... I'll pass!

At Cama Beach, just south of the cabins

Barb's Visit

Toby, just takin' it all in


Ok.. its a wall. But how cool is this wall?


The Herron (Satch. . . I've been corrected. I now realize that this is not a Crane... See what happens when you let new people on the Island? We go around renaming everything )...wouldn't let us get any closer

Barb's Visit

Dana, Barb & Robbie. . . Morning hike.

The tide was so low, it looked like you could walk to the bottom of Fidalgo Island (provided you had some serious hip-waders)

Not sure about THAT water. . .