Spring's 'A Comin'

Yes, it's still a little cold out there, and rainy.  The weatherman shows temps in the 30's later this week.  Too early to be thinking about the spring garden?  I don't think so!  In fact, I went by our local feed store last week and picked up 10 pounds of La Soda potatoes for seed.  Tricia had put in our order and they saved them for us.  We ask them to hold some back as they usually go quickly once they come in.

I talked to a neighbor at the feed store who was walking out with his box of potatoes as I was walking in to get mine.  We joked that all we need now is some dry weather.  If we'd put them in the ground now, they would rot with all the rain we've been getting.

After getting home, we lit a fire in the fireplace and kicked our feet up.

But we couldn't just rest.  No sir, there's work to be done.  We have 10 pounds of seed potatoes to cut.

While sitting in front of a roaring fire on a cold, rainy day.  I cut up the potatoes, trying my best to cut each one into chunks with an eye in each piece.  Each one of those will grow it's own plant and make numerous potatoes.  

Once they were all cut up, I spread them out and put them on the top shelf in our closet.  It's the warmest place I could think of.  Up there, they'll scab over and hopefully each eye will begin to grow.  In about ten days, if the weather cooperates, I'll plant them in the garden ground.  One thing I've learned is that the very best gardens are those you dream up on cold, dreary days.  Whether the garden comes to fruition or not is another story...

What about Water?

I can vaguely remember reading "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in high school.  The poem had a line in it that you'll remember:

"Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink."

It is quite ironic, because the quote in the poem describes the tragedy of the sailors being on a boat in the middle of the water and they are dehydrated and may die of thirst if they don't find water to drink.  Drinkable water is such a precious resource - for human and animal consumption, for plants, for sanitation.  

When I was growing up, we would watch the news and if a hurricane was brewing in the Gulf of Mexico, we would fill up the bathtubs with water.  If the storm disrupted the water supply, you would have lots of water in the bathtub to boil and drink and to flush the toilets.  It was a good lesson in preparedness.

We often think about what would happen to us or to our animals if the water supply would be cut off or contaminated.  Even though, like the hero in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem, we have water all around us in South Louisiana, it is muddy and would require some filtration and boiling to be drinkable.  What would we do?  What would you do?

We decided, to be on the safe side, to stockpile some water.  Think of it like an insurance policy.  We found three FOOD GRADE barrels in a town not very far from us that were selling for $20 a piece.  They have 58 gallon capacity.  We drove over and bought them and brought them home.

There is a big cap that screws on and a rubber gasket that keeps a tight seal.  You can see that these barrels came from Greece and were filled with green olives stuffed with pimento paste.  I assume they were shipped over to America and the bulk olives repackaged into individual glass jars.  I really like olives.  Not sure that I could eat 58 gallons of them, though.

I washed out the barrels pretty good and now I'll further scrub the insides and sterilize them.  Then we'll fill them up with water and store - just in case we'd ever need it.  The insurance policy you hope to never have to use.  Every six months or so, we'll rotate out the water by using the water in the barrels to irrigate our garden.  Then we'll "rinse, wash, and repeat."  

It's Puzzling to Me

When the weather is nasty outside, what do you like to do?  We like to light a fire in the fireplace and sit in the den and relax.  Or we cook something or enjoy conversations.  We play a hypothetical game and say, "If money was no object, where would you like to travel?"  "What is your dream vehicle?" "If you could live anywhere, where would you live?"  That always sparks all kinds of discussion.

But we found something else to do recently, that we really enjoy.  Something I hadn't done in a long, long time.  Some of the ladies in our church like to put together puzzles.  When they are finished with the puzzles, they sell them for cheap.  Tricia bought a few boxes and the other day, Tricia, Russ, and I pulled out one of them.  It was a 1,000 piece puzzle entitled, "The Quilting Bee."  We got out a card table for all the extra pieces...

Then we laid the box top on the sofa so that we could see what we were shooting for when we were done.  Then we gathered around the coffee table and began assembling it.  We slowly assembled all the edges and then started working on certain sections.  We assembled part of it on the card table and then moved it over.

We were so focused, we hardly talked for 2 hours.  It started coming together.  Then Russ had to go home.  It was getting late.  Tricia covered the puzzle up and wouldn't let me work on it until we all got together again.  (But I saw her secretly trying to put some pieces together!)  

Finally, on the next weekend, Russ came back over to the house and we unveiled the puzzle and got back on it.  It was intense.  The quilt, the barn, the house finally were completed, but all the surrounding grass, roads, and fields were more challenging.  The pieces soon all came together and we were happy.

There's a lot going on at the quilting bee other than quilting.  There's horses in the barn.  There's a man gutting a hog.  And then there's a man with a big cast iron pot over a fire.  He's stirring it with a big wooden paddle.  I think he's making cracklins!  We took it all apart and will likely put it together again or pass it along to someone who's up for the challenge.  On the next 'bad weather day,' we'll pull out another puzzle and get after it.

A Memory from 19 Years Ago

Have you ever had an event happen to you where every single time you pass a certain landmark, you think about it?  An interesting thing happened in the late afternoon on May 14, 2004 that I'll tell you about.  I still think about what might have occurred had things turned out a little bit differently.  The roadway you see below is on LA 26, directly between the towns of Elton and Oberlin.  The road slopes downward at this point and there is a small bridge over Bayou Blue.  

In heavy rains the woods flood and a swift current carries muddy water around cypress trees on the banks and backs up into a swampy area with palmettos and tupelo gums dotting the landscape.  Deer hunters hunt this area heavily and loggers pull pine trees out of the surrounding woods.  It is a peaceful and beautiful area, in my opinion, but things weren't peaceful on this particular afternoon.

After a long, hard day of crawfishing, I was leaving the farm and driving my GMC pickup to Jennings to sell my day's catch to a local crawfish boiling business.  I smelled like fish and was dirty, but was in good spirits.  My truck was loaded down.  I still remember that I had 1,600 pounds of crawfish in the bed of my truck.  It was loaded down and sitting heavy.  I had the radio on and was singing along with a country music song.  Life was good.

I looked ahead of me and to my amazement, there was a truck heading directly toward me and was halfway in my lane!  He was straddling the center line and he was going fast.  I was traveling about 60 miles per hour, probably a little too fast myself.  I quickly assessed the situation and slowed the truck down to about 45 and pulled onto the shoulder of the road.  Rocks lining the shoulder were kicked up into my fender well, making a loud clattering sound.  I was trying to be very measured in my response.  With a full load of crawfish, I didn't want to make any quick moves.  Lots of times, in this situation, you over-compensate and end up losing control.  Slow and steady...

The truck passed me by in my lane, but I was, by this time, safely off the road.  I remember thinking, "Whew! that could have been bad."  I also remember thinking, "What an idiot?"  Or something like that.  As the truck passed me by I saw smoke coming from the front of the truck along with a smell of a vehicle running hot.  That was weird, but I didn't think any more of it at the time.

I got back on the road and resumed my journey to sell the day's catch.  This time driving slower and being much more aware.  I had driven a couple miles down the road when I spotted some debris lying in the road.  I slowed down.  As I drove up closer, I quickly noticed that it was not debris.  It was a man!  A man was lying in the road.

I noticed a Louisiana State Trooper vehicle on the shoulder a little ways down, and as I ran up to him, this man was the State Trooper.  He was bleeding heavily and was unconscious, but moaning and making awful noises from his throat.  His uniform was ripped up, but I saw his name on a shiny emblem above his pocket.  I quickly called 911 and reported that an officer had been hit and needed medical attention ASAP.  By this time other motorists arrived and we sat with the officer and tried to comfort him.  We were afraid to move him out of the roadway as we were unsure of the extent of his internal or spinal injuries.  I had a real sick feeling in the pit of my stomach as I watched another human hurt very badly and not knowing what to do to help.  I do remember praying for him.  At long last an ambulance arrived and they rushed the officer to the hospital.  

Other State Troopers arrived and began questioning us.  I began piecing the story together in my mind and realized that the guy that had run me off the road was likely impaired.  I told the officers what I had witnessed.  They quickly took off down the road in pursuit.  The intoxicated driver theory was confirmed a little while later.  This guy turned out to be intoxicated.  The officer was standing alongside the roadway and the speeding vehicle hit him, throwing him over the truck and into the roadway.  The impact of the officer to the front of the vehicle had damaged the front grille and bumper, including the radiator and caused the coolant to leak out.  That's why the vehicle was running hot and smoking.  When the vehicle got too hot, the engine locked up and left the driver on the side of the road.  He ran to a nearby barn to hide and was apprehended by the officers.  I would assume the officers weren't too happy with him.  I would assume the greeting wasn't cordial and warm.

I kept up with the injured officer's recovery process.  It was touch and go for a while, but after several months, he was released from the hospital and returned to desk duty at the State Trooper headquarters in Lake Charles.  I dropped by to check in on him and talked to him and let him know that we had been praying for him and were happy about his recovery.  He was a very nice gentleman.

It's been almost two decades and I still think about that event every single time I pass by the intersection of LA 26 and Willis Courville Road.  Every. Single. Time.  It was a close call for me and an even closer call for the Officer.  In the end, the Good Lord saw fit to help us both and we are both blessed.  

Canning Ground Beef

Canned meat has always sounded unappetizing to me, for some reason.  I guess I think about those little cans of potted meat and it reminds me of dog food.  Some people like it, but I've never been a big fan.  Different strokes for different folks, I guess.  We decided, in an effort to diversify, to can some meat and put it up in the pantry.  In the event of a disaster, we could lose everything in the freezer if the power went out for an extended period of time.

Since our cows gave us heifers two years ago, we didn't have any bull calves to bring to the slaughterhouse and our inventory in the freezer is running low.  So Tricia drove to Elliott's Slaughterhouse in Morse, Louisiana (where we bring our beef for butchering) and she bought some fresh ground meat - twenty pounds of it.  She put it in a big pot (14 pounds of it) and cooked it.

She cooked it all down, after adding salt.  I won't show this.  Everyone knows how to cook ground meat.  For canning, they recommend that you drain off as much of the fat as you can.  

As the meat cooked, we washed the jars, rings and lids.

When the meat was cooked, we used canning funnels to load the pint jars with meat.

We filled them up to the top and pressed it down a little.

You're aiming to have them filled an inch from the top.

We added a little boiling broth or water to cover.

Then we put half of the jars into the pressure canner, adding water and a tablespoon of vinegar .

Let the steam go out the top pipe for ten minutes and them put the weight on the top.  We did ten pounds of weight.  The pressure valve will pop out.

The top weight will begin to rock.  That's when you start your timer.  We pressure canned it for 75 minutes.  When the time is up, we turn off the stove and move the pressure canner off the heat until the pressure falls.  You are not to open the lid until the pressure falls.

Then it's time to use canning tongs to remove the canned meat for further cooling.

We cool them off and then will label them and stack them in the pantry.

It's good to have a little food stacked away.  Meat canned this way has a shelf life of 2 to 5 years.

Dad's Old Oak Tree Talk

Tonight's post is a little bit different from anything we've ever put up on the blog.  I've opened a YouTube channel and will periodically post videos.  Probably not many of me, though!  I don't like the way I sound on audio or look on video, ha ha!  

The post tonight is one I think you'll enjoy.  I certainly did.  I am extremely proud of it.  It is a family treasure, to be truthful.  Grab a cup of coffee or hot tea and sit down for a 12 minute video.  A little background on how this came about:  A gentleman at my Dad's church teaches a Sunday School class that's comprised of 5th and 6th grade young men.  This teacher asked many of the men of the church to put together a talk to tell the young men about their occupations and how their faith plays a role in their careers.  My Mom and my brother talked Dad into videotaping his presentation under the old live oak at the old Sonnier homeplace in Oberlin, Louisiana.  This is my Dad's talk:

I'm proud of my Dad (and Mom) for raising me and giving me a love for the Lord and a love for the land.

Eating Homegrown Tomatoes on January 15th!

"Only two things that money can't buy - that's true love and homegrown tomatoes" - Guy Clark

Just before Christmas we got some REALLY cold weather.  I had reported to you that I went sadly to the garden and picked all of the fruit off of the gorgeous tomato plants.  I had many different varieties growing and they were all healthy.  Here is one of the boxes of tomatoes shortly after I brought them inside.

In past years, I cooked them down and made a green tomato sauce that we used as a soup base.  This time, however, we decided to try to ripen them.  We covered them in paper bags and put a banana under the paper bag with them.  

Soon the very green tomatoes began getting pink and then red!  We put them on the window sill for further ripening.

Soon we had bunches and bunches of red ripe tomatoes to eat and cook with...

Our summer time tomatoes are good, but these winter tomatoes are largely free of any blemishes brought about by stink bugs, worms and disease.

Tricia sliced up this perfect one right here to eat along with our after-church Sunday lunch.

It's interesting that while we are eating the last of the winter crop of tomatoes, just one room over from the kitchen, our spring crop of tomatoes have germinated and are just about to put on their first true leaves.  Out with the old and in with the new.  Spring is right around the corner.  In a month or so we'll transplant the seedlings in the garden so that we can get homegrown tomatoes harvested before the intense battle with heat and bug/disease pressure commences. 

What's in Your Pocket?

There was a commercial some years ago (for a credit card, I think?) that asked a question, "What's in your wallet?"  Today I want to ask a similar question, "What's in your POCKET?"  It's a good question.

I was at a wedding reception recently and was talking to a gentleman who is a vocational agriculture teacher at a local high school.  He's been doing so for the last 28 years.  He was telling me about how things have changed in a little less than three decades.  He said that when he started teaching vo-ag, most boys had something in their pocket.  Wanna guess what that was?

A pocketknife!

This is one of my pocketknives that I carry in my pocket.  My Dad gave it to me.  It was one of my grandfather's knives.  I carry it to remember him.  These days, you've got to be careful where you carry it, though.  If you go to an airport or a courthouse, or a sporting venue, you will likely have it confiscated from you.  How sad is that?

Back to the story.  The vo-ag teacher told me that 28 years ago when he started teaching, most boys carried a pocketknife in their front right pocket.  He then asked what I thought most boys carried in their pockets today.  I guessed a cell phone.  He told me that most boys are carrying....

Hand sanitizer!!

He said they they are carrying little bottles of hand sanitizer and are constantly washing their hands, and it drives him crazy.  He looked at me seriously and said, "What's happening to our men?"

Another good question.  That leads to the text from the sermon that our pastor preached this morning.

I Thessalonians 4:11-14 New King James Version (NKJV)

that you also aspire to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you, that you may walk properly toward those who are outside, and that you may lack nothing.

There was a time not so long ago, that we built things, fixed things, sewed things, and grew things instead of pushing buttons on screens and sanitizing our hands.  I pray that we return to those days real soon.

 

The Next Crop Planted in January

January marks another important time in the garden.  Time to plant onions.  On January 1st we plant tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant into seed pots for transplant into the garden later on.  On January 2nd, we plant onions directly into the garden.  In December I ordered from Dixondale Farms in Carizzo Springs, Texas two Short Day Samplers which consist of Creole Red Onions, Texas White Onions and Texas 1015 Sweet Onions.  I also ordered 1 bundle of Yellow Granex Onions.

They came in the mail quickly, and I opened the box.  Most of the onions are the diameter of a pencil or less.  They arrived healthy.

Planting the onions takes a little work.  First, you dig a trench four inches wide and four inches deep.  To this trench, you apply fertilizer.  I applied ammonium sulfate to the bottom of the trench at a rate of 1/2 cup per 10 linear feet.  You can see it in the bottom of the trench below.  

Then I covered the trench up.  Then I dug a shallow trench 6 inches on either side of the fertilizer trench and planted the onions 1 inch deep and 4 inches apart.  I use a nifty digging knife that my son Russ bought me.  It is sharp and wide and has measurements engraved on the blade.  It is perfect for planting onions.

It was an involved process and not kind to the back, but we got the job done.

When all was said and done, I had four and a half rows of onions planted in the garden!  I went back and counted them and found that I had just planted 296 onions!  That's what we planted last year.

Tricia let me know that we ran out of onions today from the crop we harvested from the summer.  She had to go to the grocery store and buy 3 lbs of onions to cook supper.  Well, we were able to eat off of the harvested onions for 6 1/2 months.  That's not too bad.  And we have onions in the ground that we'll harvest this summer.  I checked on them today and they are already putting on new growth.  It looks like they are well established.

Beginnings and Endings in the Garden

The new year brings with it new things to do in the garden.  A tradition I have is to get my tomato, pepper, and eggplant seeds started on January 1st each year.  I like to grow a lot of different varieties.  My favorite is probably Black Krim.  In past years I would plant a six pack for each variety with two seeds per seed pot.  If all germinate, which most of them do, that means you have 12 plants.  That's really too much for the space I have allocated for tomatoes, so we ended up giving a lot of plants away.  This year I decided to plant just one seed per pot.

Varieties this year include: Big Rainbow, Pink Brandywine, Cherokee Purple, Mortgage Lifter, Black Krim, Roma, Creole, Chadwick Cherry and Tomatillo.

In past years, I would purchase a special seed starting mix.  If you look on the ingredient list, it contains items like: sphagnum peat moss, vermiculite, coconut coir, perlite, and rice hulls.  Nothing wrong with any of that, but I would rather not pay money for something we can produce on our own - and we can.

I theorized that our wood chips that have composted in the back of the garden for three years could work.  It looks like rich, dark, moist topsoil.  I fill each seed pot 3/4 of the way full.  There are some lumps and even some small chips that haven't composted down yet.  For the top 1/4 of the seed pot, I take the same wood chip compost and scrape it through hardware cloth (think wire like on the bottom of a rabbit hutch).  This screens out the bigger chunks and makes the compost that falls through the screen have a fluffy, light, fine texture - perfect for starting seeds in.

I also planted the peppers and eggplant.  I'm planting Black Beauty Eggplant and the pepper varieties I'm planting include: Sweet Banana, Anaheim, Craig's Grande Jalapeno, Hot Jalapeno, Chocolate Bell, Emerald Giant Green Bell, Lilac Bell, Horizon Bell, and Criollo Sella.  

All of those germinate a little slower than the tomatoes.  In fact, most of the tomatoes are up.

That's the Beginnings of the garden that starts on January 1.  We also have some things ending.  The broccoli has been producing, but they aren't near done.  A cauliflower produces on head and then it's done.  A broccoli says, "Not so fast, my friend."  After the big head has been picked on a broccoli, the plant produces many florets.  So many that you must pick them just about every day.

If you aren't dutiful in picking, some of the florets quickly go to flowering, which is bad for us, but good for the honeybees.  You can see a honeybee checking out the beautiful yellow flowers of a broccoli that has gone to flower.

Each day (that I remember) I bring a colander out to the 3 rows of broccoli and do some picking.  In no time at all I have pretty good mess of broccoli florets picked.  Yeah, a few flowers, too.  I'm not particular, I'll eat the flowers.  We generally pour this on a stoneware tray, drizzle with olive oil, salt and pepper and sprinkle minced garlic on top and then stir up.  We roast that in the oven and devour it.  We call it broccoli candy.

I don't know how to quantify it, but I would guess we harvest MORE pounds of broccoli florets like this than we do in the bigger heads of broccoli.  It's like a 'second crop' of broccoli.

Following up on the Waterglassed Eggs Experiment

In 2020 we posted this Waterglassed Eggs Post to describe a way that we preserve eggs.  You can safely store eggs when you have them in abundance and then when the fall/winter arrive and the daylight hours drop resulting in a corresponding drop in egg production, you can pull out your bucket of preserved eggs, crack them open and enjoy.

We've gone down to only collecting about 6 eggs each day.  It is time to reach into our storage for breakfast this morning.  A sticky note on the top of the bucket in the pantry shows that we placed 25 eggs in this bucket back on June 22, 2022 and on July 3, 2022, we put 12 more.

And here we are 6 months later pulling them out.  As we pulled the top off the bucket, we see a couple of things.  First, some of the lime is floating on the surface of the water.  Next, and most importantly, NONE of the eggs are floating on the surface of the water.  If any of the eggs are floating, they are bad.  Those eggs are to be thrown away.  (Far away - rotten eggs are foul-smelling, pardon the pun.)

We wash the lime off of the outside of the eggs and prepare the skillet.

Then we crack the egg directly into the skillet.  A couple of observations:  The 'muscle tone' on the egg yolk is great.  It's firm and the color is rich.  It looks perfectly normal.  Here's the difference.  The egg white seems to be a little more runny than a fresh egg.  But that's okay.  There was no smell and things appear to be normal.

So what's the verdict on waterglassed eggs after 6 months in storage?  Well, they tasted like normal fried eggs.  We did not get sick and we've been eating a bunch of them with no bad effects.  That is good to know that this experiment worked.  You CAN safely store eggs for 6 months.  

Multiplying Like Rabbits!

This Post from last year chronicled the discovery of a black rabbit behind the hen house in the patch of woods that borders our property on the south side.  Last weekend something else happened.  I was doing my morning chores as usual, feeding goats and cows, scattering chicken scratch for the hens to eat and opening the laying boxes so that the hens can lay eggs in the fresh hay.  We close the boxes every night because if you don't, the hens will roost on the laying boxes and will poop in the hay.  That makes for dirty eggs!

Part of my daily routine while doing chores is to let our Great Pyrenees, Belle, run free in the pasture and around the barn.  She has a real good time.  Well, when I opened the hen house and began to open the nesting boxes, I was met with a surprise.  The black rabbit was in the hen house.  It ran quickly between my legs and before I could say Bugs Bunny, it was running out of the hen and into the barn area.

With Belle running around, this presented a big problem.  There is nothing Belle would like better for breakfast that a fresh rabbit.  I closed the gate to keep Belle out of the barn area and ran back to the house and got the net we use when we go crabbing.  Black Bunny was fast, but no match for my crab net.  I had the bunny captured.  I inspected and found the bunny was a female.  I took her inside and let Russ hold her.

Once the boys and Tricia got to see our new friend, I took her back to the barn and told her she needs to keep her distance from Belle.  I gently dropped her over the fence and continued my morning chores.  Before I headed back in to eat breakfast, I looked out over the fence to check on the black bunny.

I did a double take... literally.  I saw the black bunny.  But I also saw another one.  A white rabbit!  Oh man.  These rabbits need to be careful.  If you look at the barbed wire fence in the photo below, you can see some white hair.  That's Belle's hair.  She jumps OVER the fence routinely to explore.

So this is an odd occurrence indeed.  We do have cottontail rabbits around.  Lots of them.  We see them routinely.  But not these.  These rabbits are most definitely domesticated rabbits that either got loose or were turned loose.  I've seen the black one for over a month now.  And now a white one shows up, too!

Pink eyes.  Pink ears.  Cute.  Part of me wants to catch them both with my crabbing net and put them in a rabbit cage and raise them.  Maybe they'd have babies and raise a family.  But the other part of me wants them to be free and let them raise a family in the wild.

I had already lost sight of the black rabbit, but the white rabbit was easier to see as it jumped off into the woods.  It is highly visible with its bright white coat.

A

That's what worries me about the safety of the rabbit.  The black one can blend in in the dark understory of the woods.  The white one has a big target on its back.  Be very careful, rabbits.  There are lots of predators that would like to catch you.

What to do With a Bunch of Sweet Potatoes

We have a lot of sweet potatoes from this year's harvest in the garden.  We've been baking a lot of them and making Thai curry sweet potato lentil soup and a Sweet Potato, kale and coconut milk soup.  During the holidays, we like to do something else with them I'll show you today.  My wife is Mexican-American and grew up in Corpus Christi, Texas.  

A tradition she brought to us was making sweet potato empanadas.  She uses a recipe from her mother that's been passed down.  For this dish, we wanted to use up some of our largest sweet potatoes.  I peeled and cut them up.

Tricia cooked them and then mashed them with a potato masher until it had a smooth consistency.  She added allspice and molasses to the sweet potatoes.

She made her normal dough for making flour tortillas, but then added some cinnamon to the dough, rolled them out and then we started loading the sweet potato filling onto the dough.

Then you fold the dough over and crimp the edges.  We also come back with a fork to "seal" the edges a little later.

The holiday baking is a true family affair.  We had an assembly line going in the kitchen with Tricia rolling out the dough and filling with sweet potato filling, Russ folding over and sealing the empanadas and arranging on the baking tray.  Benjamin rested up for his job.

Benjamin, well rested and exuberant was now ready for his job.  He brushed an egg wash onto the empanadas.

It is hard to estimate to get the amount of dough needed for the amount of sweet potato filling, but that's okay.  Leftover tortilla dough is not wasted!  We sprinkle cinnamon and sugar and bake just the dough.

We couldn't wait for the buzzer on the oven to go off, announcing the empanadas were done!  We pulled the golden brown pastries out of the oven and placed on a cooling rack.

And this is where my job comes into play.  I'm the official "taster" of the warm batch of empanadas.  I broke one in half and enjoyed the nice fragrance.  Then I took a bite!

Yeah, this one is delicious.  The entire batch of empanadas didn't last but a couple of days.  That's too bad.  However, empanadas aren't really just limited to a Christmas baking thing.  We have a bunch more sweet potatoes.  We'll have to make another batch of these again soon.