Welcome to Golden Country Cowgirl
Travel
Food
Wine
RV Life
Lifestyle
About
Recent Posts
Anje Olmstead Collage Artist
Every month I am amazed at how creative the hostesses of the Saucy Sister’s cooking group are with the monthly meeting activities. At one meeting, we made two kinds of liqueur and everyone got to take home a bottle of each. One time we made fudge and had lots of samples to take home. We have made recipes from around the world and even had an elegant tea party. Last month, we made lavender wands then cooked pizza in an outdoor oven. I hear sourdough is in our future. Anje Olmstead, Fine Artist We are very lucky to have so many talented women in our group including local artist Anje Olmstead. Anje and her husband have lived in Pioneer for five years. Her husband, Dennis, wanted to move from the Fair Oaks/Sacramento…
Outdoor Pizza Oven — Fun and Practical
When it’s hot out, who wants to turn on the oven and heat up the house? I don’t have air conditioning so I know I sure don’t! But there are lots of alternatives to cooking your meals in the oven. I lived in a ghost town in Nevada for five years. When we moved there, there was a gas (propane) stove and a propane tank that hadn’t been used since who knew when. I refused to have it filled and connected to the stove. So for three years, until we got an electric stove, I got to experiment a lot with many of those alternative methods. The microwave became my friend. I used it to cook a big portion of the majority of our meals, but I…
Lavender Crafts and Camaraderie
Jan, our gracious hostess for the July meeting of our Saucy Sisters cooking group, has a beautiful home with lots of lavender beds. She orchestrated a Day of Lavender for us that included lavender crafts and some lavender infused food. When we arrived, Jan had tea, coffee and scrumptious lavender scones waiting for us. While we enjoyed our refreshments, Jan explained the craft we were going to make — lavender wands. The finished product she showed us looked and smelled amazing. Making Our Lavender Wands We had been told via email to bring pruning shears to the meeting. Once we were finished with our coffee and scones, we headed out into the gardens with our shears to cut lavender for our wands — 11 stems. You can use more…
Home Baked Bread in 5 Minutes a Day?
I love fresh, hot-out-of-the-oven, home baked bread and I bet it is a pretty safe bet that you do too. If you are like me, though, you probably aren’t very fond of the kneading part. I have some things to assist me with the kneading part like my Kitchen Aid mixer with the dough hook and my bread machine but I still didn’t make bread very often. A couple of years ago, I saw a recipe somewhere on line that sounded too good to be true. I was telling my friend Kelly’s mom about it and she said, “Oh, I have that cookbook.” Of course, I immediately asked to borrow it and devoured it from cover to cover. A Surprising New Way to Make Home Baked Bread…
T.G.I.F. Summer Concert Series
Last Friday I had one of the most fun evenings I can remember having since I moved to Amador County almost two years ago. A group of friends and I went to the concert in the park at Volcano Amphitheater, one of the concerts in the T.G.I.F. Summer Concert Series, and we had a blast. I went to one of these concerts last year and I wondered what made this one so different that it was so much more fun. It was in a beautiful outdoor setting among the trees, just like last year. The band was awesome and entertaining. Everyone brought food to share and a bottle of wine or other favorite beverage, same as last year. A lot of people turned out for the event.…