My Midwest Life October 31st

Hello and Happy Halloween! I'm not much of a Halloween girl. I have a pumpkin outside on our front porch and I'll have candy for the trick or treaters this year in a help yourself bowl.  I hope we have some.  On with the week, which has been great for getting on walks after school and seeing the sun. Yay! 

I had some creative art time! Okay another nod more to autumn not Halloween. 

My son was gone for work so Chris made homemade pasta and then I made a sauce of chanterelles and mushroom duxelles with herbs from our garden and topped with burrata cheese from a local dairy.  Basically 100% local. 

Not a great pic, but the light is the sunrise on my run last Sunday. 

Porcini mushrooms at the market.  Still need to cook them. I will! 

We went to Door County - a gas fire is way better than nothing and Magic loved it. 

Saturday Chris and I went on a walk in Peninsula State Park as you can see it was chilly, but I always love the water. 

Some color was left on the trees.  Always a beautiful sight.

I love my water; it's my happy place. 

We had our first real fire of the year, because it snowed.  

 The snow.  In October I'm not really a fan.

I hope you had a great week and enjoy your weekend.

And as always with love from the Midwest,

Beth 

My Midwest Life October 23rd

Hello!  It's been a busy past couple of weeks. Both of my girls came home from college to spend a weekend, separately of course.  It was so sweet to see them and spend some one on one time with them.   On line teaching is of course keeping me busy and we had Google Meet parent conferences which went well. It's definitely fall here in Northeast Wisconsin.  The sky is grey and we have had a rainy week.  Luckily the mornings have been dry so I've been able to get out on my runs.  I'm not treadmilling yet.

 I made a shrimp curry for dinner one night from Hummusapien.  It was delicious; my daughter Sophie and I loved it.  I had leftovers for school lunch and stuck a whole bunch of leftover roasted veggies with it.  Delish!

Pumpkin smoothie for breakfast with my avocado toast! Topped with homemade kraut!  I'm obsessed with fermenting things recently. 

Another yummy breakfast.  Scrambled eggs with leftover bock choy baked apples, and toast. 

I set some time aside to paint.  I really just need to do this more often. Just do it, no thinking, just do. 

Probably the last haul from the farmers' market. It was a rainy Saturday so I had to let everything sit on the counter to dry before I put it away. 

My husband and son extended our patio on one side. This was my crazy idea, but I didn't quite know how complicated it was. Oh well it's done.

Sunday morning before a 5 mile run. The predominate color around here is gold.  Beautiful.

As I said I'm obsessed with ferments. I'm currently making kimchi. These Ball lids are great if you want to step into this realm and so is this cookbook, Fermented Vegetables.   

I hope you have a wonderful weekend. Hopefully you can get outside where ever you are. 

And as always with love from the Midwest,

Beth 

A Week of Breakfasts

 Hello! I actually last week remembered to take a bunch of pictures of food. So I  thought I'd put some ideas out there for you to inspire you for breakfast.  Breakfast and dinner are honestly some of my favorite meals.  Actually I like all meals if they are tasty and I can share them with someone.  As I said I hope this an inspirational post for ideas.  During the school week I usually spend 10 minutes making my breakfast, give or take a few minutes, and I sit down to eat it at the table and just prepare myself for the day.  

So I started my week with avocado toast.  I had some leftover roasted delicata squash from the weekend so I had that on the side.  I topped my toast with arugula, a fried egg and homemade sauerkraut. 

Tuesday and Wednesday were the same.  I made a bunch of roasted veggies on the weekend so I could top them with eggs during the week.  I served a slice of cracked wheat bread with natural peanut butter, hemp seeds and homemade jelly.  Yummy!

The next 2 days were steel cut oats in the crockpot.  I have a mini crockpot that I use really just for this purpose.  I stirred in canned pumpkin, cinnamon, flax seeds and just a touch of maple syrup and cream for richness. Oh my was this good.  I served my baked apples on the side.  

Friday I warmed up the oats and topped it with the leftover avocado, a few leftover greens, a poached egg and homemade kimchi.  Yummy 

Over the weekend I tend to be less healthy, hey we've got to live a balanced life.  Saturday I made my regular waffles, topped with flax seed and local maple syrup, and served it with baked apples and a pumpkin spice smoothie.  I'll share the recipe later.

Sunday I made chocolate chip buttermilk pumpkin pancakes. We eat this once or twice a fall and it is such a treat. We had apples and sausage on the side. 

I hope this inspires you to play around in your kitchen, even if you have limited time.  Sometimes that's when we make the best things.

Bon Appétit!

And as always with love from the Midwest,

Beth 

My Midwest Life October 8

Good Morning! I'm writing this blog in shifts this week.  I just sometimes don't want to sit down at the computer again after "teaching" from a computer all day. I know a lot of you feel the same way. So here's last week's recap to keep my time short.

I picked what I thought would be the last zinnias, thankfully it wasn't. I love having my own flowers in the house.

I had some savory crock pot steel cut oatmeal a couple of days.  Definitely a fall and winter favorite. I topped it with leftover broccoli, kimchi and a poached egg. Delih!

Sausage with apples, cabbage for dinner.  This was a new recipe.  I would say it was okay.  I have a recipe with grapes that I prefer, but hey fun to try something new. 

A frost warning: had to bring in the plants. Luckily I had space, and a lot of dirt to clean up when I put them outside the next day.

Celery from my CSA, cool!

A Saturday breakfast of buckwheat pancake, sausage and topped with pears, pecans and of course maple syrup. 

The dew last Sunday on my morning run. This is probably my favorite photo from the week.

Another view from my run.

My haul from the fall farmers' market.  I love the farmers' market. 

My first carrots this year. I think it looks more like a bush! I think they are the best carrots I've ever grown. It helps I thinned them out earlier on, like you're supposed to. 

I hope you have great week and stay healthy!

And as always with love from the Midwest,

Beth