I have a pot of brown beans (pintos) cooking for Venison Chili and a pot of white beans (Great Northern) cooking for my Chicken Little Soup.  We will have these to eat the rest of the week.  My girls have always said that they could tell when fall and winter was upon us cause "Mom starts making soup!"  Sure thing!  What tastes better than good, hot, nutritious stick-to-your-ribs soup in cold weather??  :-)  I make mine where there are plenty of hearty ingredients ... not mainly 'soup' if you know what I mean. 

I will have fresh-baked, quick bread to go with it.  I don't use beer even though that is what this easy recipe calls for -- I've used lemon-lime soda in this batch but actually prefer ginger ale.  Anything carbonated will work.  I want to try some cream soda in a sweet bread variation, but I keep forgetting to buy it when I'm in a store that carries it in the can.  Otherwise, I don't purchase soda.  Once in a great, great while if we are going to have a homemade pizza night or something like that and some of our grown kids come home for that, we will buy some liters of soda.

DH has a chance to hunt on a huge farm (2500 acres) a little more than 100 miles north of where we live and the deer tags are unlimited up there and also the deer are much larger.  I pray he can get enough deer so that we can share with our older children who are out on their own but are unable to hunt.  The farmer's land is over-run with deer and he invites certain hunters to come and help him out by thinning them out.  DH and his brother made the journey this past Saturday to scope out the place and make final arrangements with the farmer.  Some good venison steaks and burger is very nice to have in the freezer!

Last weekend (first weekend of Nov.) was our peak colors for autumn here in mid-Missouri.  I enjoyed taking pictures.  Now most of the leaves are off the trees and on the ground so that makes it seem colder when the wind blows as it has been the last few days.  I'm still not used to these shorter hours of daylight, but that happens to me every year.

DH has put solar collectors on the southern section of our roof on the back of the house so he has been working diligently to get those hooked up and working.  Now that most of the leaves are gone off our oak trees, the sun will hit the collectors better.  I had to scrifice several feet of the family room in the basement in order for 2 big stainless steel tanks (former dairy tanks) to be installed.  It is worth it to have the solar hot-water heat, though.  He is also finishing up (soon, I hope) an outside stove with burner that can burn small combustibles, i.e., corn, sawdust, wood pellets, etc.  We have unlimited access to free sawdust, so this is DEFINITELY a blessing in saved fuel closts.  We used propane before and now until he has the furnace completed.  This furnace will heat the water and supplement what the solar collectors can do.  He has estimated he will only have to fire it for a while every 3 days or so.

I need to check what's cooking on my stove ... may be back in a few ...

God's Blessings, Rita Jo :-)

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