While I was sitting at the car shop getting my oil changed, I perused through the Better Homes & Gardens magazine. There are usually some great recipes in there and the October issue did not disappoint. I quickly snapped pictures of each one and am determined to try them out throughout the season. The first attempt was the Savory Egg and Sweet Potato Scramble. The original recipe is here, but if you’re anything like me and my husband, you need a bit more meat to make a dinner meal. I decided to add some good ole Bob Evans sausage, because nothing is more Ohio than Bob Evans. Yum.
Here’s the updated recipe:
Start to Finish: 35 mins
Ingredients:
8 eggs
1 lb package of sausage
1/3 cup milk
1/2 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
1 tbsp butter
2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled, quartered lengthwise, and thinly sliced
2 green onions, sliced
2 cups baby spinach
bottled hot pepper sauce (optional)
Directions:
1. Cook and crumble sausage in a skillet for 10-15 minutes until thoroughly cooked. Set aside.
2. In a medium bowl whisk together eggs, milk, cumin, salt, and pepper. Set aside.
3. Melt butter over medium heat in a large skillet. Toss in sweet potato and green onion. Cook, stirring occasionally, until potatoes are almost tender, about 8 minutes. Add spinach. Cook until slightly wilted, about 1 minute.
It is amazing how big spinach is until it’s cooked for a while. Unreal!
4. Mix sausage into the skillet. Pour egg mixture over potatoes. Let the egg cook and seep down to the bottom of the pan. At this point, I raised the heat to medium-high because the egg just wasn’t cooking fast enough. After the initial cook, begin mixing the cooked egg portion into the rest of the scramble, letting the uncooked part go to the bottom and cook. Continue this method until all egg is thoroughly cooked but still moist. This will take about 2-3 minutes. Remove from the heat and serve right away. Makes 4-5 servings. Add hot sauce if desired. This will reheat (like for lunch the next day) but I wouldn’t recommend more than three days.
And there you are. It was a pretty easy meal. We really liked it with the sausage added in. Hope you enjoy it as well!
I am finishing up my second week of a three-week online course for phoneography. I had never heard of phoneography before signing up, but it’s simply taking pictures with your phone. I have a fairly nice camera, but I never seem to have it in easy reach anymore. Even when I’ve got it in my purse, it’s too cumbersome to pull it out, turn it on, and set the features for the pic I want. My phone, however, is sadly always within reach. I love taking pictures, as you can see by my blog, but I feel like they’ve been missing just something.
That’s what I’ve loved about this class! I’m learning tips and guidelines for great photo-taking, not just with my phone, but especially with my phone. I’ve been learning to recognize and define what it is that I’ve always liked about certain pictures and how to prepare myself for the shot that I want.
The course is taught by Ashley at Under the Sycamore. She is fabulous and a beautiful person inside and out. I’ve been following her blog for a while now and love pretty much everything she puts out there. Not only is it great content, but the photos that accompany her entries are gorgeous! She has a whole slew of ready-models too, with their five kids and yard full of chickens. Talk about blog-envy. 🙂
So, if you are interested in an easy-peasy intro guide to good phoneography, you can sign up on her website. She also offers an online DSLR course for those with fancy shmancy cameras.
I think my favorite part of the course is the photo-sharing. This is done through Instagram. We use the hashtag #snapshopstudent and share the photos we are testing out and wanting some critique on. Not only does Ashley offer valuable advice, but the other students in the course do as well. Here are some of my photos for you (you can click on any of the images for a better look):
Shots around our backyard and neighbor’s yard.impatiens after the rain and a late blooming sunflowerI love my sunflowers! These are growing from the seeds we gave out at our wedding. I was very late in planting them.beautiful sky shots, caterpillar and our shedvintage sugar bowl, painted to fit in with our kitchen; windmill at a local park; niece’s soccer match.berries in the backyard and a blissful afternoon of 1 Peter and white chocolate pumpkin mocha from Cavu Cafe in West Chester.The Huz working on our rain barrel set-up and the wedding quilt his grandmother hand-stitched us.Yes, sunflowers again. 🙂around The House; rain barrel, porch rocker and pavers.
You can find me on Instagram at xapatotheworld. I look forward to seeing you there!
A couple of weekends ago, my mom and I went to a new park in Fairfield to make some rain barrels. I’ve been wanting a rain barrel for a while. We have well water at The House, so water isn’t a challenge here, but I really want to be a better steward of the resources God has given us. Rainwater is one great resource.
But before I get going on how great rain barrels are and how we made ours, I want to share about the park!
Huffman Park
2100 John Gray Road
Fairfield, OH 45014
513.867.5345 (Fairfield Parks & Recreation) Website
left: rock at the entrance with benefactors of the park. right: windmill used to aerate the pond through an underground tube.
This park has a very cool back story. I remember hearing about it a year or so ago, and now, having seen the finished product, I’m very impressed.
The Huffmans owned the property, 22 acres, and maintained the property as natural open space for their kids to play in. When the couple died, the family donated the property, land and buildings, to the city to be turned into a public park. The two conditions were that it had to be a learning park for families and all the materials in the house had to be repurposed (whether in the park or through the Habitat for Humanity Restore facility). I believe the park staff said that 92% of the house was salvageable and repurposed in some form or another. Even if that’s not the right number, the percentage was very high. Some of the trees on the property were repurposed into playground equipment.
clockwise from top left: tunnel with an overhead viewing spot in the center; wood balance beam and a rock circle; bumble bee monkey bars (there is some metal on this but even in the hot sun it was cool to the touch); pond with native aquatic plants to attract waterfowl.
Not only is there play equipment for recreation, there are quite a few places for learning more about nature. The property includes several learning spots like a butterfly garden and a fruit and nut orchard. We even saw a persimmon growing on one of the tiny trees growing there.
clockwise from top left: orchard learning station; tiny persimmon tree with fruit; more playground equipment and tree steppers; beautiful flowers to attract butterflies.
Last year, I took a community garden class down in Cincinnati. At one point I stopped attending (I’m not sure if we were done, or I pooped out), but I learned so much about natural gardening techniques. I would love to take more classes like that (especially for the free price) in the future, but I was so excited to hear that they would have community garden plots at Huffman Park. I had to check them out while I was there. They are completely self-service, so if you don’t maintain them yourself, they will die. But it’s a great idea and there was some good stuff to see.
This was late in the summer and the plants were already getting brown and scorched in that heavy heat, but I bet it looked great during the growing season!Baby corn and some peppers. Yum!
Ok, back to the rain barrel class. Sara was our teacher and there were 6 of us there making 5 barrels. My mom wanted to make one and I have wanted one for a while, so we both made our own. She ended up giving hers away, but ours is proudly out front in its bright, bright blue (that will soon be remedied with some spray paint…it is kind of an eyesore right now). We quickly went through the process and started at it. The hardest part was the hole saw. We had it figured for either not enough torque or too much. One of the men came over and helped stabilize the saw for me while I guided it because it was just too strong for me. I have two little snags in my t-shirt from where it shot off the top of the barrel towards my stomach. I was not harmed. I felt like wonder woman!
clockwise from top: two of the “students” and our teacher Sara on the right; mom snapped a pic of me in action!; cutting the big hole to sit under the downspout.
We had a great time and learned a lot more about the park and made a couple of friends. Sara is the first naturalist on staff with Fairfield Parks and she is very enthusiastic about her job. She is looking for more ideas of things to teach Fairfield/Butler County residents. The classes are open to anybody, but they are a little more expensive if you live out of the area. Costs seem to be primarily for supplies. They have concerts, painting and photography classes, yoga, bird watching/learning, stargazing, etc. There are tons of activities for kids. Call or visit the city website (above) for more information. http://gettotheBC.com has a lot of great information about other activities throughout all of Butler County. It’s a definite must-visit for the local tourist.
In the meantime, I’m going brainstorm how to paint my new rain barrel and get it ready for next year’s growing season!
From start to finish! Yes, I realize that the spout is too close to the ground. We’re working on that as well. 🙂
Xapa to the World 