Good eats and favorites...

I thought I would show a picture of some mirlitons (vegetable pears) that my Dad gave me last weekend. I don't think these are a familiar vegetable. They are a member of the squash family. When you peel them they ooze a sticky fluid that gets on your hands and makes it look like your skin is peeling off (remember in grade school when you would spread glue all over the palms of your hands then when dry you would peel it off? Well, its like that. What? Don't tell me I'm the only one that did that.) Anyway, I peel them and take out the seed in the middle, chop them up and saute them with ground beef and onions and bell peppers, add cooked rice to make it like rice dressing. Yumm... We also cut them up raw and put them in jars with a hot pepper then pour hot vinegar and water mixture over them. Put them in the frig and in about a week they are pickled. We call them cor-ne-shaw-ns (its Cajun French-don't try to pronounce it!) We cut them up in our rice and gravy or add them to the bean pot. Good-Good.

I also wanted to show you pictures of my favorite thing in my home (other than my sewing machine). My dining room table. My husband made it for me. We saw a similar one in the furniture store in our town but it was not large enough, expensive and cheaply made. My husband said "I can make one like that". I said "Get to it". It took him three tries. The first batch of wood he bought from Lowes- warped. The second batch from Home Depot -warped. He almost gave up and so did I (I was anxious for it). So he ordered some baltic burch wood from a place here in town. It has more plies than the cheaper wood so it made it more stable. It did not warp. Yeah!

It originally was supposed to be all black and distressed but after I saw the wood grain I could not paint over it. He suggested staining the top and painting the rest black and I love it!

It has two leaves in it. With one leaf it measures 5ft x 5ft. That is how I leave it set up (we can also take out both leaves and make it rectangle when it is just him and I. I joke and say that we will do that when he is retired and we live alone. Will that ever happen? Probably not.) With the two leaves it measures 5ft x 6-1/2ft. That is how we have it for the holidays or special occasion parties.

Here he is staining it in his workshop. Woodworking is his hobby. He likes to work in wood. He is checking into some woodworking classes in Pennsylvania for next year. It is a week long class and very intensive. I said "Go for it!" He would say the same for me if it was quilting. I'm sure I can find something to do in PA. while he is in class, right?

Quilt til your arm falls off...