This Weekend

Guests enjoyed Fudge and a white cake with Laender Frosting this weekend. 

Lavender Frosting:
Simply make your favorite buttercream frosting recipe and add to it 2 teaspoons Lavender Extract and violet food coloring.  After frosting the cake, sprinkle with decorative sprinkles and a pinch of lavendar. 

Lavender Extract purchased at http://www.kingarthurflour.com/

Other than Almond or vanilla extract, you never hear about all of the other flavors available like orange, blueberry, banana, lavender.  Check out King Arthur and be prepared to experiment.  I've learned a little bit goes far in flavor, just like vanilla. 

The Gardens are beautiful this year.  All the hard work has paid off.  This is our Zinnia bed and our granddaughter Cara, now 20 months old.  She just loves following me around the gardens, watering and picking flowers apart. 

We've been collecting rain water in a regular plastic garbage can.  Does she love to put her little watering can in there and fill it up.  Most of it ends up on her and not the plants but at this point that's okay!  She is charming.

LAVENDER FROSTING:  This weekend I made the guests chocolate fudge with walnuts AND a double layer white cake with Lavender Frosting!  Yummy.  All you need to do is add 2 teaspoons Lavender Extract  to your favorite frosting along with a bit of lavender food coloring.  Sprinkle on some pretty sparkles and edible lavender and you are all set!  http://www.kingarthurflour.com/ for the extract and lavender. 

We planted our own lavender this year.  Thinking of having some garden tours next year.  What do you think about that?

Thank you to all of our guests for staying with us!

2011 Flood

A couple of weeks ago we had heavy rains for about 12 hours.  Galena received 20" of rain in this amount of time.  The Stillman Inn faired well with just a bit of water in the restaurant and in the cellar.  No complaints here.

Some downtown restaurants were flooded with up to 6' of water in their kitchens.  Guests parked in the lower level of the parking lot at the Desoto Hotel found their cars covered in water.  The water did not come from the river.  It was all run off water that caused the damage. 

The flood gates were closed to downtown and as you can see a couple of the houses entering Main street ended up with water filled garages.  It was quite exiciting for about a day.  The waters receeded quickly. 

East Dubuque was hit the hardest.  You can drive around and see the repaired roads that were washed out and railroad tracks.  What a mess!