Alphabe-Thursday (on Friday) very appropriate for F

these week our lesson at Jenny's place is the letter "F"

F has always been a favorite letter around here...As my Hubby tells people most of his favorite words begin with the letter "F"  one is not PG 13, so I leave it to your imagination. LOL
 but first and foremost it is for the word.....FREE,  as in "If it's FREE it's for me"

Second, Since Ron was born with a rod in one hand and a net in the other... FISH and or FISHING is of the utmost importance.  here he is:

Nice Striper! (a handful of years back, but it is one of my favorite pictures of him)

Since we live in an old farmhouse that is basically "The Money Pit" that brings me to the next thing. the original house had and has no central heating in it, so we rely on a good air tight wood stove, it makes more dust, and the hearth is always messy but there is nothing on earth that comes close to the coziness it generates, and the fact that I can slow cook anything on top of it, is a plus!  Using a wood stove means FIREWOOD. This is another favorite of Ron's, he actually LOVES cutting it, splitting, working it, and having the wood stove, but now at his age, I can honestly say he doesn't like schlepping it anymore. but he really enjoys the FIRE.

here is "Pretty" rolling around in front of the wood stove's fire soaking up the warmth:

This next picture is one that I have a few of, I awoke from a nap, to find Ron sitting in his Car Harts (hat off-showing hat hair), eating cheese doodles with wine! (he is soooo cultured--NOT!! LOL)  taking a break from stacking wood and loading our outside wood box and our inside wood box. I refer to this small set of photos as my Firewood King, and they make me chuckle. When I awoke to see him like that I couldn't help but truly LOL and I was just cracking up, and he thoroughly enjoyed making me laugh and kept asking, "What, What"...it was the whole emsemble...car harts, cheese doodles and wine! Oh and this is "HIS" chair by the way. the mess on top is mostly mending or unmatched socks, sorry it is in the picture.

The picture has had no editing done to it yet. Is it just me, or is this concept just hilarious,  Wine aficionado anyone??

so the firewood, better show some wood. This is the optimal way to air dry it, these stacks are not ours, we usually put a little more space around them for maximum airflow, but then again we have more space than this person does.

Lastly "F" is for FOOD certainly a favorite to all of us. On that note, and since it is October, I want to share that FRESH pumpkin beats canned hands down! Furthermore Cheese Pumpkins beat regular pumpkins hands down. Here is what they look like:

Generally they are paler than most pumpkins, and flatish, like they were semi squashed during their development.

Here is the best way to cook them:

I am a fan of homemade pumpkin pie and bread from fresh pumpkins, the "cheese" pumpkins really are the best to use, they are flatter and less orange. Try using one next year(or this year if you can find any left at your farm markets) and see if you like it better, less fibrous and better flavor.  To cook, cut in half vertically, clean out and set aside, preheat oven to 350-375 degrees, take  cake roll pan or baking pan with lower sides, and put an 1/2 " to 1" of water in the pan, put one half of the pumpkin open side(cut side) down in the pan and cook til tender (checking to make sure there is still water in the pan from time to time) usually 1.5 hours  more or less per half (if it is a good size pumpkin-obviously it make take longer) allow to cool, and scoop away, you'll find you'll be able to scoop right up until the skin or fairly close getting you more pumpkin. This is freezable for a few months also.  You can also make your pie filling etc and freeze it.

Hooking up with  Follow Friday 40 and over also.

I didn't get to altered Art Thursday, so I'll be back for that later also.

toodles~~ Susan