Back to Reality...

The crafting and food making has been a week long hiatus due to vacationing. Though, I would call it a trip more than a vacation. We loaded Pawpaw's van and I drove us straight on through to Georgia to spend time with my great aunt (who is successfully rocking 90 years old) and my great uncle. Georgia is a fun place to visit, but there isn't a chance I could ever live down there. Between the massive amount of bugs and heat, plus 100% humidity--my hair and I were ready to get back home. 

I  managed to read two books while we were down there--which is my favorite part of traveling. The spot I am sitting is my great aunt/uncles backyard. The pond behind the house is home to a large alligator (whom we have named Ben) as well as some pretty good size turtles, some hummingbirds, lizards, and snakes. It's like a zoo!

We spent a whole lot of time hiding out in the air conditioning mixed with everyday there spent shopping. After just two days I managed to do some damage.

I don't know who in Texas coined the phrase "Everything is bigger in Texas," without first visiting Georgia..For example

This is just 1/4 of a watermelon..maybe the picture doesn't do it justice, but it was enormous. 

And my favorite part of Georgia..

It didn't matter what kind of piece of junk car people down there drive--they all had enormous, ridiculous looking rims, and terrible paint jobs for their cars. 




Now that we are back home, it's back to crafting and cooking. I tried (both to cook and to eat) spaghetti squash for the first time. I'm not entirely sold on it yet, but it was a lot of fun to make. I'm not sure if the "noodles" needed cooked longer, but they ended up being too crunchy/chewy for me. This could also be due to the fact that I've eaten regular noodles my whole life, so I'm sure I had expectations of them tasting like regular noodles, maybe I just need to adjust and try again. 

After browsing around-the easiest way I found to make spaghetti squash goes as follows...I put the entire spaghetti squash (pre-cut) in the oven at 350 degrees for 30-45 minutes til the outside became soft enough that I could cut through it. From there, the inside of a spaghetti squash looks very similar to a pumpkin. Once Some of the recipes I found said you could pick out the seeds and bake them the same as you would pumpkin seeds, I however did not try it. Also-be super careful cutting the spaghetti squash or be a little more patient than I was--that bad boy was EXTREMELY hot coming out of the oven (duh, I know). From there you just take a fork (as shown above) and scrape out of the inside. The "noodles" peel away from the edges fairly easily.

From there you transfer the noodles to a pan where you let it cook over medium for a few more minutes to let more of the water evaporate from the noodles and add your regular spaghetti toppings. I used regular spaghetti sauce and added garlic powder, salt and pepper to mine--and of course topped it with parmesan cheese :) 

Brent and I last night tried our hand at juicing (thanks to my parents) and dehydrating fruit (thanks to his parents). As Brent said last night, no wonder orange juice is so expensive to buy. We went through a bag of oranges (at $3.99) and only managed to make this much orange juice 

I'm not sure how freshly squeezed orange juice tastes- due to the fact that I HATE everything orange related including the smell, color, and taste--but Brent so bravely tried it last night and said it tasted like orange juice, so there you have it. I bought carrots which I plan to juice in the near future. If you live in the Columbus area-check out North Star and order there carrot juice..it's not actually called carrot juice, but if you read the menu you can figure out which one I am talking about. It's delicious!

Brent made dehydrated apples (with cinnamon) and bananas. This is a first time experience and are currently not done yet. Apparently to dehydrate fruit takes a serious amount of hours--who knew?  


That's it for now..I have so many things that I am patiently waiting to post I can hardly contain my excitement. Most likely Friday will be my Fourth of July post complete with lots of crafts and some red, white, and blue food!


For now--xo