Breaking Rad: Blood, Sweat & Tears

Welcome to the long awaited blog about how to make your friends cry....oh ya and how to make Horse Radish!
As the saying goes "A picture is worth a thousand words" but in our case it was a THOUSAND TEARS!

Over the last year I have been asked a thousand times how I make my deadly horse radish, well first off you need to recruit a new team every year (because after doing it once no one, other then me, will every be crazy enough to do it again!)

Once you have your new recruits in place you have to DIG up (and by dig I mean bribe your husband to dig it up). 
The root usually grows wild along the road but I have a cousin who has it growing wild in their field so that's where we went.  To identify the plant I usually just Google what the leaves look like. 

Here is a picture of it that I took before starting to dig

Once you have enough root dug up, call on your sucker "friends" to come and start to clean.  This process should be done outside with a garden hose, but in our case we were babies and it was cold out so we opted to clean it in large bowls with a scrub brush and luke warm water.

Cleaned

Once you have it all scrubbed clean of the mud you can begin to peel the radish.  We used potato peelers and a pairing knife to clean off the bark-like skin.  

Up until this point your friend have not shed any tears but in the next step you may want to advise them to put on their required gear!

Preparing to CUT the radish

Since I love my friends I made sure I took the deadly job of using the food processor.  If you hate your friends have them do that job!
Chop up the radish into bite size pieces and put it in the processor, add some vinegar and chop until desired texture.  I like horse radish to be fine and well minced.
**Make sure to step away and DO NOT breath in when you lift the lid of the food processor, it will burn your lungs.

Once you have all your root chopped and minced start to transfer to jars. This job also makes for a ton of tears so the quicker you can get it done the better.

Viola!  Horse Radish made and friends potentially lost!

I am so thankful my friends are hopefully still my friends but I know I am starting to recruit for next year!
Any takers??

Please leave a comment below if you would like to know more about the process.

Artsy Fartsy! Let's Get Crafty!

Our first "girls craft, food and drinks" night was a total hit!  According to all the likes from our friends on Facebook everyone also liked our easy to do Halloween craft!  When I first planned the craft I figured that we would have our completed projects within an hour and we would spend the remainder of the night eating, drinking and laughing.  All of those did happen, however the craft took us about 6 hours! YES SIX HOURS and that's not because of all the drinking and eating we were doing, it was because of waiting on the paint to dry.  I must warn you if you want to attempt this craft you should prime your surfaces first.
All of our supplies were purchased at the Dollarama and cost a total of $11.
~Paint (your choice of colours)
~Brushes
~Wine Glasses

 This was a great starter craft and we had tons of fun dong it.  

As I stated above we waited and waited and waited in between coats, but the end product was totally worth it!

When planning our night we decided that we would each also bring an appetizer to snack on throughout the evening.  I must say the food, company, drinks and activity was so much fun.  I definitely would recommend to get a group together and try it out!

(Pizza Dip, Chicken Buffalo and Epicure's Extraordinary Cheese Dip) 

For more information on the craft or the appetizers leave me a comment and I will reply as soon as possible!~Shannon