To The Love Of My Life

     On August 24, 1983, at 7:03 pm, a son was born, 8 lbs 7 oz, to Scott and Karen James. Little did anyone know that this boy was born to be great. Although he was a little terror, known for his excessive biting, his army clothes and combat boots, once you met him, you would never forget him. That is still how he is to this day. Matthew Scott James, a loud zealous man, now a strapping 200 lbs, always the center of attention, just turned 28 years old. I just want to say to you babe that I love you so much! You really truly are the apple of my eye, you put the boom in my rang, you are the peanut butter in my jelly, I mean it when I say that you babe are truly my Scarlette Johansen. I love you babe and Happy (late) Birthday!!!

     Our birthdays are a week apart and so it has turned into this contest of who can make the others birthday more amazing. Matt always seems to win though because my birthday is after his. I really racked my brain though and tried to go above and beyond anything I have ever done before this year. So this year I started the morning off with some delicious french toast. Not too special but it was delicious. Then we did something that I normally would never do, because it is so terrible and so hard for me. We watched a movie in the middle of the day!! Few of you probably know that nothing could be greater in this world for Matt than laying on the couch on any ordinary day and watching a movie. For me this creates serious symptoms of restlessness and craziness. But I put my sanity and life on the line to make this birthday really special for Matt. We watched Willow, the all time best movie ever, thanks to our friend Chase Cutler for letting us borrow it. "You don't give black root to a baby!!"

After the movie I had some serious cooking to do for the BBQ that was going to take place that night. I made the patties for the spicy poblano burgers, the pickled onions for the burgers, and the creamy chipotle sour cream that goes on top. Matt even helped by making delicious potato salad with potatoes from our garden! After that, I put myself on the line again in order to make this birthday really special, I attempted to do something I never before had attempted to do, I made a blueberry pie, 100% from scratch. Matt loves pie! He is not a cake person, but I would consider him a pie connoisseur so I had to make this pie perfect. I planned ahead and got the all-butter pie crust recipe from allrecipes.com and had to make it the day before so that it could be refrigerated. Then I got the pie filling also from that website. I used fresh blueberries with sugar, a dash of cinnamon, and corn starch to make it thick. The pie turned out amazing! I seriously have been bragging ever since and even thought that my pie could have been Martha Stewart worthy.

     We ended up having a great time at the BBQ with our friends the Cliffords, the Mossomans, and the Wilmores.

     I feel that Matt's birthday was a total success! Although Matt still may have beaten me with the birthday festivities this year, I do feel that this was the best birthday I have ever put on for Matt. I love you Matt!!

Oh and last but not least, lets have a moment for Matt.....

   

Pickling Beets and other Domestic Things

    
     First let me apologize for not blogging for over a month. As many of you may know, Matt was in Peru for 3 weeks, so I was on "vacation" in Salt Lake. We both had a great time. I loved being in Salt Lake with my family, swimming, hiking, etc, and Matt loved farming in Peru, making friends, eating watermelons that tasted like Jolly Ranchers, etc. Although we were both sad to leave, going back to Logan has never felt so good.
     Let me tell you how crazy it was to come home to our garden and chickens! Our chickens doubled in size and the garden was a jungle, thanks to our friends the Cliffords and Knuckles for watching over everything for us. Every year we learn something new about gardening. This year we tried so many new things like lettuce, carrots, beets, radishes, swiss chard, arugula, mustard greens and onions. They all have turned out so well!! There really is something very satisfying about picking and eating something you have grown.

Down in front with the colorful stems is Swiss Chard, then Spinach top left, Mustard Greens in basket, and then Arugula. So tasty! 

 We also dug up our potatoes because they were bulging and we probably got 20 lbs of gorgeous red and yukon golds. You can store potatoes easily in a cool place so we put ours in a sack in the basement.

     The next awesome thing is, just a few days ago I picked 82 beets from our garden!! It is seriously amazing that you can put a few seeds in the ground and get so much in return! So thanks to my Grandma Allen, I have a love for pickled beets, and an idea of how to do them. So yesterday I did a whole batch of beets and I got 13 pints of beets! Don't knock beets unless you have tried mine on salad. Heavenly! 

 Pickling beets isn't pretty. Did I mention it looked like a murder scene?

 

 

It's easy to do if you want to try it. All you need is:

About 10 lbs of beets scrubbed

7 cups beets juice (which you get after you boil them)

1 cup cider vinegar

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 Tbsp. salt

Jars, Lids, and a big pot to cook them in

All you do is wash and boil beets until tender. Save the juice. Put boiled beets into cold water and then the skins come off super easy. Cut beets into desired portions. Add all the ingredients back into the beet juice (including cut beets) and boil. You want the beets and juice to be hot so they easily seal. Then put beets and cover with juice into the jars and seal. Sealing was always a concern for me but as long as you have hot jars (you can boil and carefully get out with tongs), hot lids (put lids in boiling water but do not boil lids) and then my grandmas trick is to flip upside down when you are done, when they start to cool they seal. 

So fun and so tasty, so try them!!

Oh and of course for my cute mother-in-law:

 

Baby Lillie on our picnic

Eating the Ottor Pop she stole from Daddy

Happy Independece Day!

   We had a great 4th of July weekend. We spent Friday night at our cabin in Kamas which was amazing,

 

and then had my sister Melissa and her family up for the weekend. On Monday we went to breakfast at Angies, which apparently is where the locals eat. It was delicious. Scones as big as your head and eggs benedict. Yummy! My favorite was watching Allen get hyper because he was so excited about the food. Our waitress was laughing at us because he was so amped to be there.
    After Angies we went to look at the student organic farm where Matt works several days a week. We love it there because it is beautiful and there is so much good food to eat! Just yesterday Matt brought home a whole sack of organic strawberries. They were so flavor full! I don't know if you have ever had an organic strawberry but they are like a third of the size of the ones sold at the grocery store and packed with flavor! They aren't hard or sour, but they are soft, juicy, and sweet, so in other words how a strawberry should be!
     Then we went to first dam. We laid out a blanket, relaxed while the boys threw rocks in the river and played catch with the rugby ball. We even tried playing beggars bridge but that game is almost impossible to play with two babies and a three year old.

     Then thanks to Matt, we decided to celebrate our independence with some tasty Mexican food. Seriously though, Matt makes the best street tacos. Steak with an onion, cilantro, lime mixture, corn tortillas, avocado, and tomatoes. Then it wouldn't be independence day without some watermelon and grilled corn on the cob. I also treated us to some homemade limeade. 

 
   Finished off the day with a good firework show in Hyrum. I just want to say that I love this country! I've been around to places like Kenya, China, and Mexico and none quite feel like the Land of Liberty, the beautiful United States of America. I would publicly like to thank all those that have fought for our country to keep it free. For all the families that have sent Fathers, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, grandchildren to fight for what is right, and that is liberty. The freedom to choose life, liberty and happiness. It brought tears to my eyes on Sunday when we all had the privilege of standing in sacrament meeting singing our national anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner. God gave us this land and I am so grateful for it. And just like it says in the third verse of the star spangled banner, "and this be our motto: In God is our trust".