T Stands for Tuesday & Update on Inks & Turkey Out of the Smoker

  It is time for T for Tuesday where we share a drink related photo in our post and share over at Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog-find link in side bar.

  Last week I made the avocado ink and was totally thrilled with it. It writes really well too with with the glass dip pen. Part 1 here and Part 2 here  I took good notes in my journal and would make again when I run out of it.

 I am intrigued with the flower petal inks, so have read what I could find online. Some are using fresh but most are drying the petals first and then making the inks. Of course the recipes are all different too-so one just needs to experiment. I had dried lavender petals in my stash that I had picked up at the Amish store a few years ago. They work great to infuse in my soaps, and they still had allot of color-so thought I would try it. 

  Sadly this was a total fail photos will enlarge just click on them These dried flowers may have just been too old to extract color. also I did make the mistake of using tap water instead of distilled which could have contributed to the fail as well

most recipes were using alum to coax the color I still had a big bag of it in my dye supplies You can also use the alum you find in the spice aisle

Got a little color, but the testing strips showed nothing

after letting it sit for several hours with no color, I found this in my dye supplies, I had dyed some cotton blouses with it-so thought I would add a couple tablespoons of it to the pot to see if I could salvage something

Gave a little color on the test papers, but when I used dip pen and "ink" on paper it was very very light Just not an ink worth saving so dumped it out.

  I think I need to wait for spring and summer for fresh flowers This pot sure looked like it would give a nice deep red.

I also found a jar of indigo crystals which sadly I never got around to dyeing with. I contacted the company I bought it from to see if I can mix it with water to make ink-I saw a couple videos of people doing that with a similar product-sounds fun to try and would give a pretty blue I would think.

  With frigid air returning here to the ozarks-and a little ice on everything Sunday morning I made a pot of potato soup with smoked clams. I love potatoes, one of my favorite foods but we rarely eat them any more do to the high carbs. 

This soup was delicious.

Over the weekend pretty sunrises

You can see this sunrise reflected in the window behind the smoker. The turkey came out of the smoker around 11 am Sunday-soooo good-of course I had to try it

   See end of post for smoked turkey photos-google won't put them where I want them 

My drink share is decaf coffee with mini marshmallows-this was an experiment and turned out delicious

The marshmallows melted pretty fast and stirred in like cream with a hint of sweetness. I usually drink my coffee black so this was a little something different

 I can not get my photos to load under the smoker and google three times now is not putting these two photos in order either-oh well 

  Sooo delicious and not as salty as I thought it would be from the brine, These smoked meats would go well with cheeses and appetizer type foods, etc This is really tasty but too rich for a dinner meal.

Happy T