To Brine or Not to Brine.....That was the Question

I keep reading about how great a brine is for meat. I have never used a brine for anything, but I've been curious to see what all the fuss is about.

I had a big pork loin that I was planning to cook for Sunday dinner. I found an easy brine recipe that I thought I would try.

My pork loin was too big to fit in the brine solution. So I decided to cut it in half and brine just one half of it. I wanted to see if we could tell the difference.

I put half of the pork loin in the brine Saturday morning, put in in the refrigerator and left it until Sunday afternoon (I stirred it twice during that time).

My mother-in-law gave us a quart of her homemade sauerkraut which is what inspired the pork loin dinner. I put the sauerkraut on the bottom of a big roaster. Then I browned both halves of the pork loin and put them on top of the kraut. The toothpicks indicate the unbrined half. I salted and peppered only the unbrined half because the brine had a quarter cup of salt and a bunch of pepper in it and I figured the seasonings would get absorbed in the pork. I put them in a 350 degree convection oven for one hour.

The squash and carrots I showed you in Saturday's post were for this dinner. When they were roasted, I mashed them together.


On Sunday I put the carrot/squash mixture in a disposable piping bag and piped this weird design which I stuck in the oven to reheat. As you can see, I am not very good with a piping bag. :) It did taste pretty good, though.

When the timer went off after one hour of cooking, I was shocked to stick in a thermometer and find the internal temperature of the pork was almost 180 degrees! I was just sick. Shoe leather is all I could expect from a piece of meat that over cooked. I really must read about convection cooking.

I was most pleasantly surprised to find that the brined half was still moist and quite tasty even though it was over cooked. The unbrined half was very dry. Even DH swallowed his pride and admitted that the brined half was better (he wrinkled his nose when he saw the brining and promptly declared he was only going to eat the other half).

The simple brine solution I used was:

8 cups of water
1/4 cup salt
1/4 cup brown sugar - I may leave this out next time - there is no sweet taste and I don't think sugar does anything to add moisture.
2 bay leaves
a couple teaspoons pepper
4 cloves garlic, crushed

I put everything in a deep pan over high heat just until the sugar and salt was dissolved. I cooled the liquid and put the pork half in (it was about 4 lbs.) I stuck in the refrigerator for about 24 hours, stirring it twice during that time.

When I was ready to cook, I took the pork out, dried it off with a paper towel, browned it in oil and put it on a bed of sauerkraut in a 350 degree convection oven for one hour. One hour was too long! Next time I will check it after 30 minutes and remove it when it's about 145 degrees. It will go up a bit more as it rests. Oh, and just throw the brine solution down the drain. It's already done it's job.

Is the Romance Dead?

I went grocery shopping with DH this morning. We stopped at a video store and rented a movie.

I have mentioned before that I NEVER go to the movies and only rent a movie about once a year. Since we are staying home all weekend, I thought it might be nice to rent one. I went into the video store with him. It's been years since I have been in a video store. I have no idea what movie to get. After about 10 minutes in the new section, I am bored and decide to grab whatever is in front of me. It happened to be The Golden Boys, a romantic comedy, set on Cape Cod in 1905, about three 70-year-old retired sea captains who try to lure an attractive middle-aged woman into marriage.

It was OK. I can't sit for two hours and just watch a movie, so while it's on I am watching from the kitchen as I roast squash, carrots and make apple crisp.

After the movie, it's 4:00 p.m., so I decide to make a lemon drop martini with some Grey Goose Citron Vodka that was gifted to me a few weeks ago after I did some sewing for a friend. While shopping this morning, I bought a fresh lemon in anticipation of making this cocktail.


I said to my husband, "I should be drinking this Lemon Drop wearing a sexy house gown, sitting next to a romantic partner in front of a roaring fire in a family room with solid wood floors."

Without skipping a beat, he says, "Go get your gown on, Honey, and we can go sit by Sam's fire."

Sam is our neighbor.

Last night we had incredibly high winds and many trees blew down around town. One of Sam's trees blew down. Today he is outside burning the debris.

Sitting in Sam's yard drinking my Lemon Drop is NOT exactly what I had in mind.

I would tell that to my DH, but he is in the Lazy Boy taking a nap.

I Cannot Eat any Real Food for almost 48 hours

I had a sandwich Monday night at 6:00 p.m. and cannot eat any more solid food (except for Jello) until about 5:00 p.m. Wednesday, after a medical procedure is completed. Tomorrow I can't eat or drink anything at all...not even water...until late afternoon.

This should be fun.

I have decided that my Jello will be served today as though it's a gourmet meal. I made four different flavors and cut them all in cubes. When I can no longer take the hunger pangs, I scoop out a nice dish of different flavors.

Sometimes I mix them all together.

A while ago I bought two new flavors. I must say they are quite good.

I took a little walk around the homestead this morning. My burning bushes are ablaze in flaming red.

The maple tree is a brilliant yellow.

I brought some branches of each inside to use for my dining room centerpiece.

Bon Appetit!

You Can't Have a Halloween Party Without Goulish Libations

This would be my creepy concoction of choice--bloody rimmed appeltini.


I found this at Celebrations.com. They have a lot of other drinks there, too.

Who knew they made black vodka?

Imagine all the great Halloween drinks that could be made with this!

I really like some of the creative garnishes out there on the net...this eyeball is pretty realistic..maybe too realistic for me.

YUCK! But "yuck" is exactly what you want for a Halloween party. If you want directions go over to the hostess blog. She has all kinds of great ideas.

If I Was Having a Halloween Party

this would make a wonderful dessert:


When you slice the cake each piece looks like a giant piece of candy corn!

It even uses that checkerboard cake pan I bought and have never used!

The recipe is from the Wilton site.

You just use any white cake mix you like.

Decorating instructions:
Place Divider Ring in one 9 x 2 in. pan from set. Tint 1 cup of white batter orange and 1 1/3 cup yellow; reserve 1/3 cup white.

Fill inside small center ring with white batter, inside medium ring with orange batter and inside large outer ring with yellow batter.

Carefully remove Divider Ring before baking. Bake and cool 1-layer cake.

Divide cake top: mark 2 inner circles, one 1 in. and one 2 1/2 in. from edge of cake.

Cover sides and top to 1 in. mark with yellow tip 16 stars, cover area to 2 1/2 in. mark with orange tip 16 stars, fill in center with white tip 16 stars.

Attach icing decorations to cake sides. Position candies around cake.



Have you ever seen anything cuter than these strawberry ghosts for appetizers? They are from Taste of Home.
They look pretty easy to make, too.
Strawberry Ghosts

30 fresh strawberries
8 ounces white baking chocolate, chopped
1 teaspoon shortening
1/8 teaspoon almond extract
1/4 cup miniature semisweet chocolate chips
Wash strawberries and gently pat with paper towels until completely dry. In a microwave-safe bowl, melt white chocolate and shortening at 50% power; stir until smooth. Stir in extract.
Dip strawberries in chocolate mixture; place on a waxed paper-lined baking sheet, allowing excess chocolate to form the ghosts' tails. Immediately press chocolate chips into coating for eyes. Freeze for 5 minutes.
In a microwave-safe bowl, melt remaining chocolate chips; stir until smooth. Dip a toothpick into melted chocolate and draw a mouth on each face. Yield: 2-1/2 dozen.

One of My Autumn Joys

You know that Indian corn candy that comes out around Halloween?

I have always hated that stuff... even as a kid.....yuck! It was right down there with Circus Peanuts (remember that awful candy?) at the bottom of my list of favorite sugar delights.


Well, no more!

A few years ago I discovered that this candy is utterly delicious IF you mix it with peanuts.

I now look forward to autumn so that I can buy a bag of Indian corn candy and a can of peanuts.

I have discovered that the ratio of 6 peanut halves to 1 Indian corn is the perfect blend of salt and sweet.

YUM! It's more addictive than potato chips. Has anyone else discovered this delectable treat?

Look what came in today's mail..............my first Christmas issue of a magazine!

Love the cover. I am saving it to read this weekend as we are going on a little trip...a bit of a family reunion with my Mom & Dad and my Aunt...we have not seen my Mom's sister in about 18 months so we are all looking forward to the weekend. I wish my Uncle could come, but he is a minister and has other obligations. We will miss you, Uncle R!

The Trouble with Having Multiple Blogs

is that I tend to publish more to one than the other, depending on the season.

Since the flowering season is over, I am publishing more on my quilting blog and my tablescaping blog.

I never know if my Perennial Passion readers are intersted in the other part of my life. I guess if you are not, then there is no reason to check back until next May. But for those who are, I have posted this week about my Halloween table and my latest table runner.

I think I have shown you the Witch table runner I made a while ago. I used it for my Halloween table on the tablescaping blog.

On the quilting blog I was inspired by a set of Christmas plates I bought last year from C*old*water C*reek.

So if these things interest you, please come on over and pay me a visit. You can click the different colored words in this post, or just click on the right side panel where I show my other blogs.

Sometimes I wonder if I should have left it all on this blog. It can be a pain to try to post to so many different blogs!

Hodgepodge Day

Who wouldn't want to eat more pork when it's this delicious?
DH bought an assortment of colorful peppers last week. We had them for three days in our salads and I still had a bunch left. So today I decided to toss them into my pork chops in tomato sauce. Don't you love all that color?

Thursday night after work and after dinner, I baked some oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. It must be the colder weather because I almost never bake anything on a week night.

We had a cookie and a cup of hot tea for dessert tonight.

Tomorrow we plan to put all the outdoor stuff away. It's been cleaned and sitting out to dry for a couple of days. I counted all the containers full of dormant plants that we have to store for the winter. There are 30 of them. We have had a lot of rain so I am leaving the containers out in hopes that they will dry out a bit. I don't want them to rot while under the house.


I've also been sewing a bit today on a new table runner

and I spent a couple of hours reading a new book.

It's been a good day.

Root Beer Falls

On the way to the falls, we stopped at Mission Point cemetery just for this view.

Wow! It's an amazing view, isn't it?

On to the falls...

Root Beer is the nickname of these falls because of the foamy amber-colored water spilling over at the current rate of nearly 6,000 gallons per second (which pales in comparison to the over 50,000 gal/sec maximum which has been recorded). The root beer color is the result of tannins leached from the cedar, spruce & hemlock trees.

The real name is Tahquamenon Falls - pronounced Ta Qua Ma Non- nearly as beautiful to say as they are to see. Tahquamenon is an Ojibwa word referring to the place of the dark berry swamps.
These falls are tucked into a wooded area near Lake Superior in the eastern Upper Peninsula of Michigan near the village of Paradise.

By these pictures, I would say that the village was appropriately named, wouldn't you?


Once again we decided to navigate many steps to get to alternate viewing areas. You don't have to go down any steps to get good views. The pics above were taken on the easy walking paths.

The 116 steps noted here was only to get down to the lower level.
From there we walked up and down another 35 or so steps to get to different viewing areas.

I think we went up and down over 500 steps, counting the lighthouse. We must be somewhat masochistic! I could feel a moderate pulling of the calf muscles the next day. But it was worth it. We got to see some interesting rock formations that we would not have seen from above.
You can walk about five miles down to get to the smaller lower falls. Or you can drive like any sane person would after climbing 500 steps. We drove.
The lower falls are not nearly as tall or wide as the upper falls, but have even more breathtaking scenery.

This is the land of Longfellow's Hiawatha."By the rushing Tahquamenaw" Hiawatha built his canoe (there have been many variations on the spelling over the decades). Longfellow loved this area and I think you can see why.


When we finished at the upper falls, we spent a moment enjoying the outdoor fireplace before heading to the second set of falls.



At the lower falls we went inside the store to get a drink. The power had gone out and the soda fountains did not work. There were no lights, no soda, no food. All they had left were a few cans of juice. We bought some and sat down at one of the checkerboard tables beside a window.

Checkers are not my strong suit.

It took less than ten minutes for me to go down in an embarrassing defeat after jumping just three of DH's red checkers.

Playing checkers in a general store reminded us of Sam Drucker's store. Anybody remember that show?

At 2:10 p.m. we left the falls.

At 2:15 p.m. this was the view from our car window:

By this time it was down to 39 ° so we were thrilled at our good luck to not have been caught a half mile back in the woods in this rainstorm.

We were even thrilled the next morning as we sat in a soliarium eating breakfast and watching the big white flakes glide to the ground.

Yes, it was the first snow of the season.

Nonetheless, I had a wonderful weekend. I hope you did, too.

Toe Dipping in Frigid Lake Superior

Friday after work we headed up north for the weekend to enjoy some fall color. I made reservations over a month ago, gambling that this would be the peak color weekend.

For once, I think I won the gamble!
One of our stops was the Iroquois lighthouse which stands watch at the entrance to the St. Mary's River and the Soo Locks. History notes that Ojibwa Indians massacred a group of invading Iroquois warriors at this location in 1662, and the light was named in honor of the slain Iroquois.

The lighthouse is now a part of the Hiawatha National Forest and has undergone extensive renovation. I found it interesting that the residence now houses volunteers who man the visitors center. The lady (and her husband) we talked with has spent two years living upstairs in the tiny quarters of one side of this lighthouse.

Visitors who climb the 72 narrow steps to the top of the 65-ft. tower are rewarded with an impressive panorama view of the Whitefish Bay coastline.

We, of course, made the climb.

And it was indeed a lovely view.


Of course once you climb up, you must climb down. If you are claustrophobic, you may not enjoy going down this hatch and navigating around all those spiral steps.
I think it was harder going down than it was climbing up.

It was a nice crisp 41° when we stopped here at about 10:30 a.m.
I felt full of energy and left the boardwalk to walk to the shore of Lake Superior.

For some strange reason I had the urge to dip my bare foot into the huge lake. So I slipped out of my backless shoe and did so.

Ah, nothing quite like a little toe dip when it's 41° outside!