mid August report...

So the huge load of summer workload is pretty much over. My last day at the fruit exchange was last Sunday, and I'm offically laid off from there. I might go back and work there again in the spring, depending on what happens or not in the interm.

Sunday was my last day.. I took Monday off. Tuesday was the elections, and this gal won the democrat ticket for trustee with 35 votes. I have a competitor in the ring, threw in his hat as a write in on the day of- his name is Tim. He likely made his qualifying 10 votes to be on the November ticket. We got home from GenCon on Monday, and I had a Town Hall meeting that night that mom attended with me. Guess who wasn't there? Tim. Or the other two write in people.

GenCon.. again, fucking huge. The main exhibition hall has now taken up the full space that was gaming last year, and spilled over into the basement of Lucas Oil Stadium. Lots of good folks, fun times. Steam Crow is my hands down fave of the show. And of course, doing stuff like this with my sister always makes regular stuff extra awesome! It's just a blast doing stuff like this with her.

Took most of Monday off to decompress before the Town Hall meeting. Tuesday was some petty errands and waiting on hold with bill folks.

Wed was weeding, got the kale bed and kennel bed done. Made a version of Jambalaya for dinner. It was fucking good, and there's leftovers. I did it fast and easy, using up a couple bags of cooked rice (about 6 cups worth) that were in the freezer. Added in a pint of home canned tomato juice, a cup of home canned enchilada sauce, a handful of dried tomato slices, couple cans of undrained mushrooms, chunk raw chicken, few andouille sausage, and a half package of white fish fillets. This easily fed the 5 of us, with a few leftovers, so I would say 8-12 servings, depending on portion size. If I had been feeding more of a crowd, I would have added in a can or three of various canned dry beans of any kind, rinsed and drained. If I had less sausage or chicken on hand, or wanted to make a meat free version, I would for sure add 2-3 different kinds of beans. The seafood is critical, using whitefish, shrimp, or scallops is what's needed here at the end of the simmer to suck up the rich flavors.

So...

2-3 tablespoons bacon grease- butter or olive oil will do, but bacon grease is best for that porky flavor. If you have rendered smoked ham fat, that is even more sublime.
1 large onion, rough chop.
2-3 sweet bell peppers, medium dice. This is optional, but makes it way better. 
6 cups cooked rice
1 large boneless chicken breast, raw, chunked in large two bite pieces
5-6 andiulle saugage, left whole, room temp. If they are raw, cook them first. If they are heat and serve, leave alone.
6-8 white fish fillets, or bag of raw large shrimp, or package of scallops- frozen. This is important, you want to add the seafood in it's frozen state, not thawed at all.
2 cups tomato juice- V8 and bloody mary mix works too.
8 oz enchilada sauce. This can be fudged out with salsa, or a can of diced tomatoes with some extra seasoning thrown into the mix, or use a bigger 15 oz can of sauce if omitting the mushrooms.  Do NOT use premade spaghetti sauce or canned tomato sauce.
Canned beans, rinsed and drained. Optional.
2 4 oz cans of mushrooms, one drained, one not. If not using mushrooms, refer to the enchilada sauce note. Or add 2/3 cup water.  Or if you want to make it HOT, replace the 2 cans mushrooms with 2 cans diced chilies or jalapenos.
Cajun seasoning. Usually I add 2-3 Tablespoons per batch. Adjust to taste and heat level.
Dried minced or wet jar garlic. Usually 2-3 tablespoons per batch
1 tablespoon salt, and one teaspoon black pepper

Sautee up your onion and peppers in the bacon grease till fragrant and starting to get a bit soft.
Add in the tomato juice, sauce you are using, half of the cajun seasoning, garlic, and salt.
Once that gets up to heat, add in your mushrooms or substitute, and raw chicken, and/or canned beans. It should be a bit soupy right now. If not, add in some liquid. Water, beer, and stock are good. Up to 8 oz depending..
Add in rice and stir in well.
Layer in sausage. Cover, reduce heat to low, and let simmer 15 min.
Add in half of the seafood, stir well, cover, let simmer 15 minutes.
Add in the other half of the cajun seasoning, garlic, and salt. Add in the black pepper. Stir well. Add in the other half of the seafood. Let rest on top. Cover, and let simmer on low 15-30 minutes.

If you find yourself on a hold.. kill the heat on everything up to adding the seafood. The addition of the seafood should be in the last wee bit before service.

A note to folks.. if you like eating rice a lot, and like to buy those single serve instant nuke packets of it... Consider making a double batch of rice next time, and freeze off portions. Rice freezes and reheats really well. If you tend to use pouches, use freezer ziplock bags or vacuum sealing. If you tend to do bowls of rice, use deli containers or butter tubs to give you bowl action.
This works great too for when you have a lot of leftover rice, either homemade or chinese take out.
 
Thursday was mulching in the kale bed, putting in the smother bed between the kennel bed and the garage, and weeding out the central lasagne bed since that's the only one that had shade, lol. Lots of watering.  We are still disturbingly dry. We haven't quite hit the drought like in 2012, but it's creeping in there.
And cheesey baked potato bake for dinner. A dear friend of mine who happens to be a firefighter and hates cooking and I were chatting the other day, and I offered to help him out with some super easy recipes to feed 20 hungry firefighters. So I'm kicking off with another round of solarium cooking.
I baked off 5 pounds of taters in the nesco. Browned off one pound of bulk sausage- Jimmy Dean, Tennessee Pride, whatever- just mild or regular flavor. Did that up on the camp stove. And I'm baking the whole thing off in the Nesco. So.. recipe formulation time, using ratios I've used before.


5 pounds baked potatoes, large dice
1 pound cooked meat- this is a great way to use up leftover meat
1 can cream soup- we like mushroom or particularly, poblano queso cream soup. But any of the cream cooking soups are good for this- particularly depending on the meat used. Cream of asparagus or celery would go will with basic chicken, cheddar or nacho cheese soup would be good with chorizo. If you are making a double batch, you can mix soup flavors to suit since you would use two cans.
1 cup cream dairy product- this can be room temp cream cheese, cottage cheese, ricotta, or a boursin style spread- that's what I'm using tonight since it was on hand and needed eating up. Do not use a sharp dairy like greek yogurt for this, use a blander/sweeter dairy.
1 cup sour cream. You can substitute sharp dairy like greek yogurt here.
1 8 oz package shredded cheese- I used a mac and cheese blend, but any blend will do. If making a double batch, you would use two packages anyway, so you can do two different packages of cheese to make a blend.
2 4 oz cans mushrooms, one drained, one not drained- if you can't do mushrooms, substitute in a 2/3 cup water with a beef bouillon cube, brown G's, beef stock. Or if doing a chicken or pork version, chicken cube, golden G's, or chicken stock.  If doing a double batch using leftover meats of various kinds, 1 cup water plus 1 each of beef and chicken flavoring.
2 medium onions, halved and sliced across the grain
1 T each of thyme and parsley
2 T dried minced garlic
1 t each salt and pepper
1 t mushroom powder
1-2 cups veggies, depending on your veggie level. A drained can of corn or  green beans, a bunch of broccoli, a couple cups a various frozen veggie tail end bags lurking around your freezer needing to be used up. Make sure you drain canned veggies, and get frozen veggies thawed out before mixing in. Even if you normally skip veggies, add in at least that can of corn or whatever. The moisture content from the veggies is necessary during baking.

Yes, you must use baked potatoes. Easy enough is to bake off a batch the night before, but doing it earlier in the day works too. Don't cook them till they are baked potato eating done- when you stick a fork into it to test it, pull off the heat when it hits about 10 more minutes till done time. Let cool at least till room temp, or better yet overnight. You want starches to set before slicing up, much like letting a steak rest to let it's juices redistribute before cutting into it.
You can use whole boiled/steamed taters for this too- but usually what you steam/boil whole is better suited for other applications like potato salad or smashed potatoes.

Meanwhile.. in a big frigging bowl, mix together everything but the taters and meat. Then fold in the taters and meat. Pour into a big baking dish and cover.
Normally in the oven, I would bake this off at 350 for an hour, then kill the heat and let rest for a bit before serving. Since I did it in the nesco, using a steam bath baking, I'm doing it at 400, utilizing the cover of the nesco for covering instead of actually putting a cover on the pan itself. I'm using a deep half hotel pan for this, and it could easily accommodate a double batch. If I were to do that, I would reduce the heat to 300 and let it bake for 2+ hours till a thermometer inserted in the middle reads at 165 degrees.  Everything should be hot and melty.
I also sliced up a large hot banana pepper to put on top of half the pan, to up the kick a bit. If doing a double batch, I would layer in half the potato mix, a layer of pepper rings on one half of the pan, then the other half of the mix with a second layer of pepper rings on top. Or do two 9x13 pans, one pepper spicy, one not with a single layer of pepper rings on top of the spicy.

Happy spring! Garlic.. and what? mmmm.

Under a winter weather advisory, been starting to snow like a mo for about an hour now.. and welcome to spring!

Sure, seems early and cold.. but March, April, and May are traditional spring months around here. Wasn't going to be shoveling today outside... so today was the freezer cleanout day. The kitchen freezer was empty enough finally that I could really scrub it down and start refilling it out of the chest freezer. Then it was empty out the chest freezer to let that defrost properly before refilling it again. Currently we have a laundry hamper of frozen food and a couple whole turkeys out on the front porch getting buried with snow. And this folks, is why you clean out your freezer in the winter :) You got a whole chest freezer outside, use it.


We have also pulled almost all of the fruit out of the bottom of the freezer- bags of whole strawberries and necterane slices, and cherries in simple syrup. We also have wild blackberries, gooseberries, and a wee bit of sugared strawberry slices too. A lone bag of sweet potato pulp and a bag of mixed winter squashes pulp to make into squash ravioli with a couple bags of won ton skins that need to be eaten up.
Tonights dinner is a treat usually reserved for summer- Southern style squash casserole. It's full of butter, cream soup, and sour cream, layered in with thick slabs of summer squash and top and bottom is crusted in with buttery crispy bread goodness :)
Pulled out a bunch of random meat bits and a lot of random cheese to the upfront freezer. We have and use a lot of cheese, heh.
Used up the last of the melon pulps in fruit-waters, yum! The watermelon was really good, will do it again for sure. But the cantaloupe, while good, was not awesome. I would rather stock twice as much of the watermelon.

Also made a batch of blueberry simple syrup today, yum. Maybe more of a shrub than a simple syrup, I'm also using dehydrated lemon slices and homemade vanilla sugar as a finishing sugar.
And today I roasted off a large quantity of homegrown garlic. yum. Who loves roasted garlic? This girl does :) And this is the second batch recently, teehee. I did up a lil brown crock of it the other day, and used it up to bake off a large loaf of roasted garlic Italian bread, yum. This batch uses up the last of the "roasting stage" garlic. I went through all my sacks of garlic we still have so far. We eat a lot of garlic! I set up another pot of garlic shoots with all the seriously crappy heads that didn't make it through winter storage so far. The first one I've already trimmed a couple inches off the top of, and it already needs another goodly pruning! Very gratifying and frigging fast growing instant awesomeness for this time of year.

Anywho, gratifying greenery... I have a dining room window full of plant goodness, and more sprawled across the house. 

Snort, thought I published this already, apparently not... First of spring was yesterday, time has slipped on me.

Well anywho, in the last three weeks since that bit above.. lots of seeding and reseeding. Peppers and another set of peppers, tomatoes and another set of tomatoes. Bunch of herbs and some flowers. Broccoli and cauliflower. Already got the first greenhouse set up outside and it currently has lettuce, brussels sprouts and hellebores in it. Thyme and rosemary plants are now out on the porch too, though if we get freeze warnings in I will still pull them inside or put them in the greenhouse. I can tell it got too nippy one night already since the tyme plants have some purplish blush on some leaves, showing frost damage.

Crocuses, siberian irises, and some of the early daffodils are blooming, yay!!

Been shaking up the menu around here. Using up the larder. Creating some new recipes. I think I might have enough of a stack or recipes by now that I need to start considering my cookbook again, and filling in segments of it.

Spring peepers have been out for a it over a week now, and the swans are on the pond and nesting. I need to pick up birdseed to start refilling the feeders again.

I trimmed out that crappy area on the fenceline where the weed trees grow- I hope I did it early enough and used enough spraypaint on the cuts to make a difference. This is a battle I'm tired of. I also trimmed the apple trees, one rather heavily. We will see if I did it too late in the winter or not, but I think I'm good.

The solarium has stayed above freezing for most of the winter, which is good. It has had some time in that fridge zone of 35-45, which is not good. Not bad necessarily, but I would like to improve on that if I can.  It has stabilized warm enough that I can use it for some of the heartier seedlings, yay! Which is good, because all of them are needing potting up, and I don't have room in the kitchen, heh. The grand shuffle of plants is on.

But I gotta bail off, need to get ready for work. And yeah, publish this right now before time slips again, lol.

Hell yeah for food season!

So now I've expanded herbs. Two lemon thymes, an oregano, a golden sage and a purple sage, and a varigated sweet marjoram for the herb garden. A lemon verbena for my porch and one for my sisters porch. A curry plant for my porch. A honeydew melon sage in a hanging pot to go along with the hummingbird feeders- because they love the red blossoms and it's a tasty sage.
The mint border... LMAO. A couple years ago it was some chocolate mint for free from a neighbor, and a pineapple mint I purchased and moved out of the herb garden and into the mint border. Then my buddy mailed me ginger mint, banana mint, orange mint, and apple mint. Now I've picked up mojito mint, lemon mint, and Kentucky julip mint. Kind of makes me want to roll around like a cat in the stuff, heh. But also now that trouble hill that was full of crappy weeds, rocks, and almost impossible to do anything with including mowing will be a huge area of some of the most tasty scented stuff in the yard! Plus lots of good tasty stuff for cooking and teas. How nice is that?

The plants for friends and family are now hardening off nicely- and will be ready to go out in a week or two. I took the time to repot every single tomato plant. Basically popping the dirt out of the red solo cup, gently knocking off the bottom half to two thirds of the dirt, dropping the plant back into the cup, and refilling with the dirt I knocked off. This will stimulate the roots, make the plants way less leggy, and in general be an overall good thing.

Got the last of the pole beans in the ground. So now I have Eye of the Tiger along the string side of the dog run, Succotash along the link side- leaving spaces for where the white tomatoes will be getting tied up, and the three Mayflowers that sprouted got their own teepee down by the squash bed by the garlic. The Gold Nugget, Ronde de Nice, and Musquee de Provence squashes got planted in as well.
Today I direct seeded the Golden Wax, Lynx, and Masai beans into their beds- and the 5 other fresh bean seeds I started in TP tubes are starting to pop, so those will be ready to go into beds in the next week or two. That gives me time to see what popped for direct seeding, I may change my plans and plant in my tube plants into the beds depending on how the beds pop or not.

Found out the Menards has way better pricing on the fencing I want to make tomato cages with. Instead of 50 bucks for 5 foot tall 50 foot long, I can get 6 foot tall 50 foot long for just 54 bucks. An extra foot taller on the cage is a very good thing. And they have concrete reinforcement wire in 50 foot rolls for almost half the price that Home Depot did for if/when I want to make CRW cages.

And today was rainy.. but Hardings had some oober good deals, so we went shopping.
Buy 2, get 3 free- on bacon, lunch meats (ham and turkey), 2.5 pound bags of boneless chicken breasts, shredded cheese, center cut boneless pork chops, and bread. So for about 100 bucks, I got about 250+ bucks worth of groceries- thank the gods for a chest freezer! Geez, the chicken alone, 50 bucks worth of chicken for 20 bucks? And that will last us for a goodly while too, since we usually use up a 8 pound bag or so a month. And the lunchmeat, that shit is expensive! Now we got a goodly couple months worth of meat there too.

Of course, when the freezer gets stocked, other stuff must come out. Glad I did up one of those pork roasts recently, lol. We only ate about a third of it for dinner with it done up Asian pulled pork style, and yep, the rest of it got vacuum sealed up into 2 packages and into the freezer for later eating. But the pair of chickens I picked up for 88 cents a pounds a month or so ago came out, and are now defrosting- those will get done up in the large roaster/slow cooker in a couple days for a delish couple dinners and lunches worth of chicken as well as a gratuitous amount of chicken stock right in the roaster- plus the carcasses to make regular stock with. Something tells me a batch of chicken bacon ranch pasta salad is in the near future :)

And Meijer had baby protabellas on sale 10/10, 11th free. So of course we picked up 11 packages. Two are going into dinner tonight, six will get pickled up into fridge pickles tomorrow, and the last three will be made into a super tasty sounding soup by my sister in the next day or two.

In lunch news... I've discovered baby food in pouches. Yep, baby food for lunch. Sounds weird as hell, right? But there are seriously tasty combos of veggies and fruits- and it's just puree, no additives, no strange preservatives- folks want their babies to eat pure straight up. Which is kind of funny considering how much that changes to pretty much shit junk food once they are toddlers, ha. But one pouch is a half cup of puree, a full serving of fruits/veggies. And when I hit them on sale or clearance, I can get a pouch for 50-75 cents. Pair that with a hard boiled egg or two for 25 cents or less, and a cracker snack of various kinds for another quarter or so.. and I got a full blown full lunch for well under 2 bucks a day. And it's tasty as hell. I sometimes swap out the eggs for nuts- like this time I found 3.5 oz bags of peanuts in various flavors at Menards for 75 cents a bag- those will get split up into 3 portions each. The cracker snacks are the big variable. Sometimes it's triscuits, which is 9 servings per box at 2-2.50 a box, sometimes it's snack packs of cracker sandwiches with can cost 2-2.50 for 5-6 packages, or cookies which can be 1 dollar for 6 packages or today I picked one up that is 12 packages.
All of this is oober nice for being portable. I can easily eat this stuff while driving to work. Or in the case of some of the packaged stuff, I can put one in my pocket, and have a nice mid work snack with no muss for fuss. It don't sound like a lot of food, does it? But it is right in line with what one should eat for a lunch portion wise. A serving of protein, veggies, and breads/fiber.
I can hardly wait till the garden is producing to add fresh veggies to this mix :)

With fresh meat in the house, I'm making pork chops for dinner tonight... and it's getting about time for me to prep up taters to boil up for mashed taters... so off again, off again, jiggity jig.

Happy Spring!!!!!

Happy Spring!!!!! To catch us up on the last week or so...

After the gloriously warm Monday we had where I was able to open windows and stroll around the property... It's been standard chilly early spring weather.

But Monday was great! Hardings had shank in ham on sale for 99 cents a pound, so I picked up two 11 dollar hams, and we smoked them all day long. Tossed in a few neck bones too for the stock pot. Then Tuesday I broke down the hams and set up the huge crockpot to make stock, and a smaller one to render out ham fat. And we had scalloped potatoes and ham for dinner Tuesday night too!

Ended up with 13 pounds of ham- a pound for dinner, 5 1 pound packs for the freezer, 3 2 pound packs for the freezer, and a pounds worth of snacking while everything was getting broken down.
2 1/2 gallons of fine pork stock. It's a nice liquid stock instead of the usual gelatin stock I get from when I make stock from hocks.
2 1/2 pints of rendered ham fat. This stuff is the shit, kicks butt all over bacon grease. It's a gourmet smokey porky treat.

And while out and about on Monday, noticed that signs of life are popping up!

The garlic beds needed clearing off-

The earliest of spring blooms are popping up, mini siberian iris and snowdrops-

The magnolia is going into bud-

The pond is well on it's way to being melted-

And the hyacinths, daffodils, and irises around the solarium are starting to pop up-

So now today is Spring!! The weather is nice and clear, a bit chill. But that's normal for spring. Best of all, we have swans back again! Yep, one swan has splashed down on the pond, and sis and mom saw the swan with another one on one of the ponds further down the road. So it looks entirely likely that we have a mated pair on the pond again! Which is extra nice, because after having a super ton of geese on the pond the other day it's a relief to have swans to chase them off- geese are messy things, lol.

We have tons of seedlings popping up all over the place- or at least all over in the trays that are in the kitchen, not so much for the ones I just started the other day out in the solarium. It's still pretty cool out there overnight, so I'm not too surprised about that. But warm weather is coming, and I couldn't be happier about it.

In some other news, work has me scheduled on every day for the whole next week- a couple days are just an hour or two of meetings, but still, it's nice to get the hours in, we seriously need the money. And also cool, I've been asked to chair as an election official in the elections coming up! It was ver nice to be an inspector last November, and the election guy happened to be eating at my work the other day, and asked me if I still wanted to chair. I said yes sir! So now at the end of next month I get to go in for my training.

And knock on wood, looks like dosing the shit out of myself with home cures and vitamins might have possibly knocked my sinus sickness out. Or at least I'm desperately hoping so- and not that it's sucked back into the backend of my sinus.  Cant afford to get me to a doctor or get me proper antibiotics so my nose blowing almost clear this morning is a really good thing.

But now I'm back off again, got some stuff to take care of before heading into work this afternoon :)

Come on February!!

January 31...

Come on February! Well, maybe not so much, considering we are supposed to be getting in a snow storm tonight that could dump 5-12 inches on us by the close of tomorrow, lol. Some snow is good, but I can't risk getting snowed in because I start my new job on Monday.

Today I was bustling again. I got out a 48 cell flat, and seeded up 24 each of White Soul and Yellow Wonder strawberries to stratify in the solarium for the next couple weeks. My Pinetree order came in yesterday, and I had just the right amount of seed to do 24 cells of each. They are white and yellow alpine strawberries, and require 2-4 weeks of stratification before germination. So instead of leaving the seed in the fridge, I figured why not just pot them up now since I have the flat, and the solarium is still cold enough for it- and if the solarium gets too warm, I can always move the flat outside since it has a dome. I'm hoping by June first I have a heap of little strawberry plants to put out somewhere in the yard- haven't quite settled in on where yet, but I have months to figure that one out, lol.

I'm starting to come to the conclusion that I may have been premature in putting out all three mini greenhouses- I might need to reconfigure everything and bring one of them back inside so I have a bit of heat insurance in the solarium- in just a couple short weeks it will be time to start up peppers, tomatoes, and since I don't have the upstairs anymore to set them up I might be scrambling to figure out what to do.

A few hours today was spent getting out to the resale shops again. I only had one cardigan in navy blue that fit over my workshirts, so I needed to get a couple more in the other allowed colors. Since the last Saturday of the month is Goodwills half off day, I risked the crowds, and glad I did. I ended up getting 7 sweaters, a pink thermal shirt, two turtlenecks, two oxford shirts, and a stealable spring jacket- for 20 bucks, instead of 65. A big bonus was while heading back from Paw Paw, I hit a thrift shop that was giving stuff away for free today because it was their last day open in that location- they are moving to another location and wanted to clear out as much as they could. So three of my sweaters and the coat were free :) Two of the shirts were new, and a few of the sweaters were high end retail tags, so I have to wonder just how much I really saved over retail today. Best part is, I don't need to shop for any more work clothes for a goodly while now.

Since we got the boys this weekend, I'm making meatloaf with tater tots, mixed veggies, and rolls for dinner tonight, yum.

February 1...

Snow, snow, more snow.. and did I mention snow? It started around midnight, and has been coming on ever since, and is supposed to keep coming on for hours yet. I think so far we likely have gotten around 4-6 inches. But on the bright side it's powder, so not too bad to move it. Started out this morning with one of the boys and shoveled out the front porch and got access to the racks. Unstrapped one and brought it inside, it's now sitting snug as can be in front of the dining room windows.
Took the covers off the lettuce, garden cress, and spinach. At this point the covers are more likely to cause rot and dampening off than they are to do propagation good. Not a hell of a lot of spinach sprouted, but it is pretty old seed, so I can't complain. The lettuce is looking a bit thin too, but I can deal with that- once I get some good true leaves going on I will do a second sowing in the same container.
Soaked the Mary Washington asparagus last night, and today I set up 54 TP tubes of seeds amongst three containers. Those are now sitting on the rack in front of the window. And I got two pots of 7 pot super hot pepper sown- dang, those things take 160-180 days for maturity verses all the rest of my peppers that span 70-95 days.

And an unexpected nice today.. My sister was out shoveling the end of the driveway since the blower wouldn't start, and the neighbor across the street came over with his tractor plow and plowed our driveway for us! How nice is that, right? She and he chatted, made friends and he said if the snow gets deep, just knock on their door and they will plow us out. Guess who is getting cookies baked for them, right?

Happy Imbolc!!

Woot for the coming of the end of winter, you bet your ass I will be burning candles tonight :)

Unfortunately, I didn't get to go to work for my first real day today. Yep, the driveway was clear, especially because my sister was out at 6:30 making sure of it. But when I walked out, I stood in the middle of our unplowed road and damn near cried. I could leave the garage, but not get off the property! Fortunately, work was really understanding about it, and just scheduled me on for another day.

So today I baked up a lot of cookies. I made salted carmel and windmills, and bagged those up along with a jar each of strawberry jam, methley plum jam, caviar, and mixed hot pepper rings- and sis and I took them over to the neighbors. He was just about to get the tractor out to push them out then come do our drive, but it was already done. He seemed pleased with the goodies and told us next time it snows, he will come on over :) Nice that we have seemed to have made some new friends after all this time. Kind of makes me extra look forward to work- I'm tired of knowing no one out here.

With pretty much all the rest of the shoveling done, I took the time to shovel out the wintersown racks and a path out to the bird feeders. The birdies were well pleased to get the seed feeder refilled and a fresh suet cake. They are pretty slow on the bird bread, I think it might be because the stuff is frozen, lol.

New job...

January 30...

So I had my orientation and prelim training for the last couple days.. My brain is melted with information overload. And I only got a 92% on my entry test damnit. I needed an 80%, but still irritated about the 92%. Especially after getting 100% on all 40 pre-test quizzes.
Personally, I think one of the questions I missed was because of poor phrasing and/or punctuation, but whatever.

But on the bright side, my trainer was well pleased with my impeccable appearance. And I did blast ass through orientation and prelim training. And with some savvy resale shop shopping, I got my entire starter work wardrobe of 4 pairs of pants, 6 shirts, a sweater, two belts, and a pair of non slip leather shoes for under 40 bucks. I ended up getting a pair of black shoes because I realized what black shoes I already have were fine for office, but not appropriate for this job. And I almost have totally memorized all 20 "work ethic must have" tag lines. And I'm above par on safety and sanitation standards- Chicago is tougher than out in this area of Michigan- and I have remembered OSHA standards from when I was an OSHA trainer/book keeper.

All in all, a good start to my new job.

Now I feel like I should crack open my safety and sanitation textbook and my Spanish learning course again. Just because I'm an over-achiever like that, lol.

I'm kind of looking forward to my training work hours next week- really get a chance to see what I will be doing on the sales floor- and check out folks work clothes. Finding oxford button down collar shirts in my size is a terrible PITA. And work sells them online for 8 bucks, but I figure if I can get away with false buttonholes and buttons for a buck or two a shirt, hey, I will do that. There's tons of appropriate shirts in the resale shops that are only missing that detail.

In other news, I went through all my sewing stuff today. Gave a heap of stuff to my sister so she can work on some stuff for the etsy shop. And a stack of floursack cloth towels for her to zip up into napkins. Not a huge heap, but hell, something is better than nothing, right? Since we love using the washable napkins, I figured it was a good deal to ask her to quarter and hem the towels. And I pulled out a few chunks of fabric so I can start working in isolation bags for this summers plants. Also hit up a seed saver for some advice. Turns out I might not need to make so many little bags, but rather large "bandages" to wrap, and save my sewing for smaller plants that get bagged whole.

And the birds are pleased as punch with all the goodies. The bird bread is going slower, but the suet cake is good. Of course I have slipped and whacked my left hip twice while out and about in the last couple days feeding them. I seriously need to be more careful.

Mom has made four pairs of slippers for the etsy shop, and will be making one more before I do a batch of posting. My love has printed off a couple of wall socket vape charger stations. On Sunday I will do up a batch of photos and put them online.


So now I feel entitled to a beer, a comfort food of potatoes... and a comfy sit in bed with junk TV shows for the night :)

Hooray for seeds!!!!!

January 17th...

What's been going on over the last week? I had a job interview at Cracker Barrel, and the retail manager liked me enough to set me up with an interview with the general manager. It's only part time, and not a lot of hours during the winter, but right now any money coming in is good. I can cross train for more than one position too to help bring in more hours- and it will still give me a little time for getting stuff done around here as spring creeps closer. I'm still hitting all the sites every day to see what else I can apply for of course.

My sister came home mid week, and her kitties were really frigging happy about that. Like my meows, they miss their person terribly while gone. She said she's gonna make some stuff for the etsy shop, but we shall see if that actually happens or not. She said she wants to pick up a welding job too, but again, we shall see. Today was melty and steady in the mid 40's and she was nuts enough to shovel the whole frigging driveway, so that was really nice. Now the kitchen is clear, and once we drop back down the rest of everything might turn into a full sheet of ice to drive on. I really really hope not though, because we might get snow back in next week. But hey, at least the temps are supposed to hover around freezing instead of super arctic.

Unfortunately, with the last week or two of hitting super fucking cold temps, the solarium finally dipped below freezing. We lost the spider plants, but most of the rest of the plants still look pretty ok, including the dill surprisingly enough. I figured the cold would super kill it, and it didn't happen. But the winter squashes I had stored out there all got hit with the nip. So I spent a day roasting most of them off then draining them off, and now I have three quarts of pulp in the freezer and the last quart or so I pureed in the food processor and it's now in the dehydrator. I'm bummed that they got frozen, their color changed and everything so it was really apparent. But now between what I just froze and the last squash I froze up I got three batches of squash soup pulp ready to go. And I figure by the time the puree is dry and crispy, it will top off the squash flour right nice, but without the days and days of work like I did last time, lol.

I finally got the library at least decently unjammed with boxes of moms random stuff and the table moved out of the living room so we can pull moms treadmill out of the pole barn for her. Her stability is really suffering and she seriously needs to get on her feet and walking more to help improve her function again. Right now I worry about her getting coffee a few times a day with the way she walks around. Sedentary life is a killer for her, and we need to mend that. So treadmill it is. Now that the drive is clear we will be able to pull it out, maybe tomorrow.

Got three more litter jugs set out today, two of bleeding heart, and one of black peony poppy. The poppy is a breadseed type, the second I have planted so far. I will be planting it in the yard apart from the first just to help keep the seed pure. I still have one more show poppy to start too, but I'm not sure where that's going to end up.
And JOY!!! My huge trade seed package that I've been waiting on since November has finally shown up. Chock full of a ton of flower seeds, a bunch of veggies and herbs, and even some foliage plants. Now I'm going to have to figure out where a bunch of em are going to go, but I'm just pleased as punch about it. It looks like I might be able to do a full streetside border if I can get enough seed started and get the ground torn up. I'm going to have to save my pennies and rent a tiller in the spring, and I already knew that was coming. Just now it looks like it will be even more important to get it done. I want to get the streetside border set up, the smoke tree circle cut in, and I'd like to till up a strip along the fucktano fence in the sanctuary to start putting in a heavy border there too. Maybe I should contact Siggy and see what he has going on- I know he has a huge farm size tiller, but what I'm going to be doing is smaller, and I don't know if he has smaller equipment or not.

And I did get in some seeds that are kind of, um, yuck. Bronze fennel, red perilla shiso, and anise hyssop. Anise is one of the least favorite flavors around here, and I got a bunch of seed. So what to do? I was thinking maybe a planting in the back 40- that way I can use the seed, cultivate the plants for future seed use in trading and selling- and a lot of bugs and birds positively love the stuff, so even though we don't like it I can still start up a critter friendly patch. I also got in a bunch of tomato seed, even though I specifically asked not to get tomato seed, now I will have to figure out what to do with all of that, if I want to keep it or trade it.

But all in all, pretty happy about it all. I had sent off 84 packets, and got back 96 packets. Including a bunch of stuff I really did want. Like a lot of different kinds of lavender, coleus, chamomile, nigellas, and celosia. And some interesting sounding small broccolis and cukes. And a bunch of herbs.

I'm hoping by the end of this growing season, I will have expanded the fenceline bed up to the pole so I can get in a proper dill bed, get something going around the pole barn, the front yard/streetside beds, the sanctuary plantings... Plus the regular garden beds and starting on a lot of back 40 action. There sure is a lot of space back there that can be worked with.

I'm also hoping that as spring comes on, I can scrape up a few extra bucks for planting supplies to be able to get some stuff in a roadside stand. I'm already planning on starting out pretty much what I got for tomatoes and peppers I'm growing this year, but it sure would be nice if I can swing some other stuff too. Shit is just so tight now, it's hard enough to pay bills, let alone try to allow out a few extra bucks to try to make money to pay bills, lol. Winter is always harder too because of heating costs.

On the upcoming spring slate is clearing out the chicken coop and figuring out what we need to do to get a few chickens in this year. Hopefully it won't be too much investment to start getting regular eggs and some meat through the year. That would be a nice pressure not to have to worry about as much, less buying of eggs and chicken. I still am keeping my eye out for a good pressure canner at yard sales so I can start canning up meat, stocks, soups, and all that other stuff I can't water bath can. Still hoping that soon I can get the front burner fixed on the stove so I can actually start canning again when the season is nigh too. I'm paranoid I'm gonna fry out the back big burner then we are screwed for any reasonable big pan cooking at all.

But speaking of cooking... I made up a big ole pot of spaghetti sauce for dinner tonight- we got the boys so an extra big pot is needed. And I need to shoo off in order to prep up garlic bread and get the pasta kettle going.

Freaking Awesome weekend!

I had a really great weekend! Went and worked at the faire this weekend, and I was a busy bee the whole time :)
Got to hang out with some really great friends. We were there on Friday to help out with the RESCU rally, and I wasn't needed so much, so I got to hang out with a friend at the bakery and sling some dough around. It was good to putter around the kitchen.
On Saturday and Sunday I got to hawk- and it was really fun! Made some sparkley to wear while out there, and it was rather grand. My bellows were probably the loudest unamplified sounds in that section in a while, lol. Every time a show broke up on the stage across from us, I would holler out. It felt rather good to do it too. And I'm happy I quit smoking at the beginning of March.
It was really cool to handle so much pewter out on the street too- I picked up and carried around some really cool pieces! Got to do parade on Saturday, I always enjoy doing that. My face is almost sore from smiling, and arms tired from super-waving, it's great. Like a super happy workout right in the middle of the day. 
Got to make a bunch of new friends too- some of it is a blur I met so many! But a lot of faces and folks I look forward to seeing again :)
I received a pair of absolutely lovely earrings as a late birthday present. They are tiny delicate blue winged hummingbirds made of pulled glass. So absolutely lovely I was stunned at first- then immediately put them in my ears, woot!
I laughed a lot this weekend... A LOT!

I sort of got a commission for some jewelry this weekend. It's sort of an artwork for artwork barter sort of thing. One of the gents I work with is a stunning artist of the drawing kind. I asked him to draw a killer bee for me to hang in my living room. And he said yes, just because he's cool like that. Later on that night, he was able to get a beaded spider he absolutely loved- and I understood his happy because of my happy over beaded spiders. So I offered him to do a beaded pin mount for him in return for him drawing up my bee artwork.

So... on to Grobox Hill....
The whole garden has done wonderfully while I was gone! Apparently we got in a nice couple hour long gentle soaking rain early this morning. I checked all the plants. Radish and dill seed are popping up. Albino beet and Little Gem lettuce are not. Rainbow Lights swiss chard is regrowing back really well. Early Contender bean has most of the seed spots sprouting up really well. The peas not so much.
I have several ball squashes to pick, and a few Roughwood Golden Plum tomatoes.
In general, need to do a lot of picking, picking up, and such to do.

Unfortunately, while I was gone this weekend.. Someone came onto the back 40, and cut down many branches along our back corner. It created a full sized vehicle tunnel in our tree path. Not sure who it was, but we know who it likely is. So tomorrow my sis and I will get back there and stack up the cut down branches in the gate spot, and string up a no trespassing sign. And a sign that the new property is under new ownership, please contact us. I'm hoping that we can have a friendly conversation about it. I'm not too opposed to horses and four wheelers coming through. But full sized vehicle path is a no. And folks cutting down like that on my property without permission is a no as well.

The lawn needs a serious mowing as well. It was lovely to pull in and see all the little yellow flowers, but the yard is looking pretty shaggy as well. The first five hardy hibiscus plants are doing really well in their bigger pots. I'm looking forward to planting them in next spring, and starting new seeds for their plant in. I think I want to plant them in along the easement side of the street line. We still have my sisters lovely purple smoke tree to plant in, and I think I want to cultivate in that front corner quite a bit to go along with that. Depending on what we got going on for lilies in the bins, I would love to plant some of those around the smoke tree. I still haven't planted in the 5 two year lavenders, and those might switch back down to the trimmed cedar again. Set those in with another set of bin lillies.

Another day, another entry :)
It's Tuesday, weather is in the 60's and it's been drizzling on and off all day. A nice watering in sort of day for the plants. It stopped dripping for long enough to get out and pick some veggies that needed picking.

That's a big collendar full of squashes! The littlest ones are the size I'm supposed to pick the ball squash at. But I had a few grow like crazy while I was gone.

The first pickings of the Juane Flamme tomato. They are a lovely orange.

Not much for bean pickings yet- only 4 plants are producing. About a third of this is what I picked before I left for the weekend, the other two thirds I picked today. This batch is now in the fridge in a greenie bag.

I also set up five trays of the dehydrator with all four batches of banana peppers I've picked. I gotta say, I love the greenie bags, they really do store the veggies much longer than they would probably last otherwise.

Last week we smoked a bone in ham, it was about 10 pounds, at $1.29 a pound. I like to make every penny count if I can- and fortuantely I can use up every last scrap of the whole thing. We had a dinner for four the night we smoked the ham, and mom had a ham sandwich with it while I was gone. Today I broke down what was left.

On the left is three pounds of chunked ham. I will package it up in pound bags for later eating. On the right is the ham bone, it's a pound and a half. This will be getting made into pork stock tomorrow. I typically get three pints plus of pork stock out of a good ham bone. I'm glad I got dried celery on the shelf- I will for sure be using it to make stock tomorrow.

The is the fat scraps from two hams. I froze the scraps from the last ham I made, and I figured I had enough with two hams to render a nice batch of fat. This is raw, right at the beginning of cooking. I used about a cup or so of water in the bottom of the crock pot to help prevent sticking or burning till enough fat has rendered out so it self cooks. I started it around 2:00, and should take a few hours.at 5 PM, they were only half rendered down and really starting to burble up.

Made up a batch of chicken stock the other day. Today I peeled off the fat layer and dropped it into the chicken fat bin in the freezer. Ended up with seven 2 cup bags of stock for the freezer, yay! A packet of chicken meat from the roasted chicken ended up in the freezer too- this was after a dinner for four.

Since I had so many ball squash, I decided to try a freezer experiment. Seared summer squash packets. I sliced the balls about 3/4 of an inch thick, seasoned them with Italian herb mix, salt, and pepper, then seared them off in olive oil. Then they got laid on a drip rack to cool off. Sliced up an onion and a handful of banana peppers. Dotted the bottom of the stack with butter. Stacked together six slices, tucked the onion under and on the slices, then laid out the pepper bits on top. A goodly sprinkle of minced garlic on top. then folded up the packets. Now they are labeled and in the freezer, and in a bit we will pull them out and see how they cook up. They are kind of bulky as individual packets- but if they are good I will put them into the camping/cookout file- and then see if I get good results making a solid family sized packet.



Apparently I saved this entry instead of publishing it.. oops.... Publishing now :)

Birthday Bee and gardening

Yesterday was my birthday, and it was a great day. My two birthday wishes were good weather and good food, and I got both :)
Unfortunately, the neighbors decided to open burn garbage unattended, filling my home with toxic fumes and making us immediately ill- I saw the fire marshal show up and shortly after they were out with the garden hose, putting out the fire and swearing up a storm.
For dinner I did up a small beef roast with baby red potatoes in the crock pot- sis did the gravy with the liquid. Sides were steamed carrots by mom, and spinach and beans I made up a few days ago. Man, I gotta say, that vacuum sealer lid attachments were well worth the pennies! The spinach stayed nice and fresh for far longer than they would in a regular container.
Picked up some greenie bags on clearance a couple weeks back, and those are paying off too- been able to keep peppers, beans, nasturtium leaves, and garlic scapes fresh for way longer than they would otherwise.

Started my third batch of nasturtium leaves in the dehydrator today. By the time the season peters out on those, I should have a rather nice stock of peppery green goodness for the cold weather months. I make a homemade jambalaya mix that I like to use peppery greens in, last time I used radish greens, but next time I'll likely use the nasturtium leaves. The things have been putting out enough seeds that I'm fairly optimistic that I will have a goodly amount of seed stock and some seeds to try grinding up to see how they substitute for peppercorns. If I have this kind of luck next year, I will for sure be trying out false capers with the things.

Right now the freezer is chock full of excellent deals that we have been getting lately. Plenty of fish that was 9 bucks for a 5 pound bag, country ribs that were 1.70 a pound, and a 10 pound bag of chicken leg quarters that were 70 cents a pound- 7 bucks for the whole bag! Got a bunch of other porky goodness like loins and ham that have been on sale lately too- I really need to get the smoker fired up to do up that ham, yum. Frugal shopping now will see us into good eats for a few months :)

The garden is looking good all around- been picking squash and peppers.

From left to right is spaghetti squash, one ball squash, cue ball squash, and Long Island pumpkin. That crazy vining up is the goats eye beans. Only been picking one ball and cue balls, the spaghetti squashes were labeled as "two man", but the things are huge enough to feed 4 of us with leftovers. I'm watching them ripening with baited breath. The Long Island pumpkin has lots of blooms, and starting to grow fruits- those I'm extra hoping for goodness out of.

The pepper bed. The pepperonchini isn't doing as well as I had hoped, but ah well. The top crop beans I seeded in in a last ditch effort to get any beans growing after the critters chomped up so many of them are starting to take off- I will hopefully get a couple pounds off of them before the year is out. The star producer so far is the banana peppers. And of course the jewel nasturtiums, those are absolutely wonderful.

The monster tomato bed- I'm not sure how I'm even going to be picking the ones in the middle. But next year will see some serious spacing adjustments. To the left you can just see the zucchini which is finally producing some fruits, and I'm not too sure if those late season buttercups I put in are really going to do anything or not.

Picked the last of the garlic today- the bed looks a little funny empty. I want to shovel in a bit of horse poo and work it in before doing anything else with the bed.

This is the last of the garlic, Russian Giant, Skips 3, Skips 2, and Up North.

Here's what todays pickings look like compared to what I picked on the 10th. Skips 1, Leningrad, and 2 bundles of Pearl Porcelain. Right now it's looking like I will not be replanting the Skips 1, and unless it tastes really good, the Skips 3. I'm debating on the Up North too- that will totally depend on how it tastes too. For sure will be replanting the Giant Russian and Pearl Porcelain.
The partially cured garlic was good enough done in my estimation for me to take the next stage of curing.

Here's the Pearl Porcelain, Leningrad, and Skips 1 trimmed up and tied up to finish curing. To the far right is the Kankakee softneck. The Skips 1 is noteably smaller than all the rest of them. These will cure up for a couple more weeks before I give them their final trim. All the rest of the garlic is now on the top shelf in the laundry room curing away. The huge pile of Kankakee hardneck is looking great, but I didn't think the leaves had died back enough to warrant trimming like the above heads.

Now it's time for me to scoot because I need to get the brush wood picked up around the yard and down to the firepit... Thank goodness for pickup trucks, lol.

Chives...

Yesterday I was looking out the window, watching the breeze ruffle the clumps of chives growing above the grass. Then I figured it would be nice to go pick some of that stuff.

I ended up picking about a pound and a half over the course of 10 minutes, heh. I used a kitchen shears and snipped them off about 2 inches or so from the ground- right where they were growing plush and above the grass. Filled my large basket about 3/4 full. There is more growing out there, but I figured I better figure out what to do with what I picked already before anything else.
They were growing in thick clumps, so I was cutting hanks about an inch or two thick at a pass. 

I rinsed them and layed them out nice on a towel to dry a bit.
Then I made a simple oil using a big bunch of chives and olive oil. Used a pint and a half wide mouth jar. Poured in a cup of oil, filled with chives, muddled the chives a bit with my pestle, then another cupish more oil to fill the jar up a bit. Cap and sit, shake every day for a few days.
What was left over still stuffed a gallon ziplock. 
Today, the 28th,,,
I made a pound of chive butter using 3/4 cup chives in 1 pound butter. Lined a 6 inch square pan with plastic wrap, filled it, plastic wrap on top to help smooth it down, and into the freezer for a couple hours. Then I pulled it out, cut into eighths, wrapped up and into a freezer bag with the air sucked out.  Dried 3 trays of chopped, wasn't positive if I would like them dried or not. If I do, I can make more. And made a pint and a half wide mouth jar of chive vinegar. I large chopped about a cupish of chives, filled jar with white vinegar. Shake and sit just like the oil.
Using a bunch tonight in dinner- chicken and mushroom risotto.
And I still have a half pound of the stuff sitting in the fridge to use! Gonna make some boursin-style spread tomorrow :).

Some pics :)

The gallon bag after I had taken out the top chunk to make chive butter. The jar there is the chive oil I set up yesterday.

Chive oil on the left, the chives left long and muddled in oil. Chive vinegar on the right, using rough chopped chives and white vinegar.

Chive butter, right out of the freezer.

Chive butter after it's been pulled out. Line the pan with plastic wrap, fill it, then another layer on top. Makes pulling out the whole thing this neat practically goof proof.

The butter after being cut into eighths. I thought a whole stick of the stuff might be too much, so make them half sticks. Made sure to note this on the bag when I labeled it.

I'm thinking about trying out just freezing the stuff too. It wraps up pretty nice and tight to tuck into the freezer, and a few bundles might be pretty nice to have handy. 

In some tippy and friends... The wad of foil in the chippy pipe seems to have worked. That thing hasn't been touched. We had another chippy warning in the solarium, so I let the cats loose... and nothing. I think I have isolated an entrance thanks to a couple of cat pounces, and today I stuffed that crack with foil. I figure it might be a good enough seal off stuffing for now.
All the local birds love my suet mix. Grackles and red-wing blackbirds are still being bully piggies.
Squirrels have been really non-show so far this spring, which is unusual. I'm not complaining since they are usually more pests than welcome.. but still, the lack of them is sort of odd.
The one swan on the pond this spring has been floating around, chasing off geese. Seen more herons early on this spring.

The 29... Picked more chives today. Not quite as much as the other day, lol. Set up a full dehydrator, made a small jar of chive and peppercorn infused vodka to try with bloody marys, and a big container of boursin style spread. Yum! And I have a bunch of chives leftover for a few days of cooking additives. Or perhaps a small batch of garlic and chive jelly :)

 This is what a clump of wild chives looks like. See how nice of a tuft it is sticking up above the grass? Makes it really easy to ID :)

This is the second picking, about half of what I picked the first time. Weighed in at 9 ounces. So maybe I picked about 20 ounces the other day instead of 24. Still, think about how many of those little plastic boxes or wee bundles of chives you would have to buy to make a heap this big. I think it would be 40 .75oz boxes to make 30 ounces, at 2-4 bucks a box? `And it grows in my lawn, 100% chemical free, for zero dollars.

Pulled the heap out of the basket to better see what a big ole heap of chives that is! On the dehydrator sheet is the tail end of what I picked on Sunday. For small chopped stuff, I like to load the jelly sheets, then put the sheets onto trays. Otherwise I always drop stuff onto the tray below, lol. A full dehydrator will yield 2 ounces of dried chives.

Decided to make a small jar of rosemary oil today too- the plant is rather healthy and just coming into bloom, and I want to start encouraging more branching. 

And today I think I saw an oriole! It was more of a pale orange instead of the bright orange, but it for sure wasn't robin colored. It was pecking at the watermelon rind. So I promptly tossed a handful of dried watermelon into the rind along with a dollop of apple jelly, filled a couple small jelly jar feeders, and set up a bigger jar feeder filled with dried watermelon and cantaloupe puree.
I have a dirth of easy orange in my home, lol. I just needed a little orange for the opening of the jar to signal to the orioles, and just had squat. I think I will need to keep my eye open for some cheapie orange placemats or something to set up some more feeders.

While wandering around today picking that second basket of chives, I noticed the garlic is looking absolutely splendid! The potato bags tops were blown over, so I put the tomato towers in upside down in the middle of them to help keep the bags open so they can get water and sun to grow. The Alaska peas are looking healthy- no wilting back or looking mashed. The nasturtiums were looking pretty good too. Noticed a couple patches of spring bulbs in random places I don't really think I've seen them before. I think the daffs in the sanctuary are starting to naturalize a bit :) We have three kinds of tulips blooming in the fence border. Small and kind of weak, but there. And the parsley is growing in just great!

I still need to get off my butt and make the seed tape demo. But right now it's time to go figure out what to make for dinner :)

Making stuff for the holidays...

Started Thursday, December 5th..

Heh, we got in so much snow last Wednesday we couldn't leave the house for Thanksgiving.. Yesterday saw the 50's and mostly melt off.. Tonight kicks off freezing temps for days.

As per usual, now is the end game time for getting Christmas shopping and gift making done... I try to make more than I buy. Quite often baked goods and seasoning mixes, and we usually make an ornament or few.

So far the luffas are all sorted out and in a couple bags to get strung up or packed up. Picked up a couple random bits for the boys. Of course there are jars of goodies in the basement too :)

Been tinkering with some gift in a jar stuff... Tried a sesame cracker that was pretty underwhelming, and a cranberry hazelnut cracker that was pretty good- but I wouldn't really call it a cracker. I didn't have cranberries so I chopped up a few prunes instead. Yes, prunes, and it was tasty. Don't think I would use either for gifts.
Made up a few batches of jambalaya rice mix for our pantry. We like to eat rice with beans and/or sausage pretty often, and the grocery mixes are just too darn expensive. I didn't have any chives on hand like the recipe suggested, so I used a mix of parsley and dehydrated radish greens. And ground my own celery flake too. I just keep em in little ziplocks in a jar for my pantry :) But now that I've resupplied the larder, I'll make up a couple of these in jars for gifts too.
Tried out a hearty Italian style bean soup.... It's more of a thick stew. Very tasty. I made a few presentation jars of that one, they just need their instruction tag and pretty cloth cover. Think I might make a couple of these for our pantry shelf too.
Made a few Spicy mushroom and corn quinoa spice mix kits. Those turned out nice enough I'm considering making a few of those for our pantry too :)

Started baking. I desperately need a small chest freezer damn it. And I dropped my nutmeg mill and shattered it- may angels and demons weep. Life sort of shrivels up without freshly milled nutmeg.
But got a batch of regular chocolate chip cookies done- And they turned out different than usual because I used the homemade dark brown sugar. They taste great though. But I do need to tinker with that ratio quite a bit, and I need to make more brown sugar too.
Also pulled from the freezer and baked up the bar of Nutella cookies. Those turned out exactly as they should :)
Now I just need to make up a third batch of something and off into the mail that bit will go. Not sure what it will be, But I'll be baking it tomorrow.

Started out this morning taking the mushrooms I got on clearance off the dehydrator- oyster and button. Spent a crying hour prepping up a full load of fresh onions to dehydrate. I clean and chunk them, then mini process them fairly fine before spreading onto jelly sheets. I'm almost out of dried minced onion from making up gifts and mixes and onions have been on sale recently. A little work and I pay about 2 bucks to refill a container that sold for 5-7 bucks. And it gives a little low gentle heating on this side of the house during the day and night for the few pennies it costs to run the dehydrator.

Quick cooked up a batch of dried small red beans to dehydrate once the onions are done. Did I just say I dried cooked dried beans? Yeppers.
Dried beans in the bag are dried from fresh, and require a goodly cooking before they are edible. But there are 30 minute dried mixes with beans, how is that? Because they cook the beans, then dehydrate them. After a lot of reading around, I decided that making my own beans from dried before dehydrating would be better than using canned beans for the final product. And it's cheaper- Once a 1.29 bag of dried red beans is cooked up, fills the colander like 4 cans of beans. No way I'm picking up canned beans for 30 cents a can. But dehydrated beans can cook up just like canned beans do- fast or slow cooking, though with some slow cooking additional fresh addition of canned is good.
Used the standard quick instructions on the bag- cover beans well with water, bring to boil, let boil 2 min, kill heat and cover. Let sit one hour.
Fully drain and refill water, cover, and simmer for 2-3 hours, till tender.
From there I let steep for a half hour before draining and rinsing. Already small cracks and splits are appearing on the skins- but not like I care about that. All of them are still very whole and seem like they will stand up that way on drying AND they are very tender. Now it's just hurry up and wait till the onions are done. The beans might have to go into the fridge overnight.

Picked up a beautiful 3 lb rib end pork roast for a buck a pound yesterday. Today it is being brazed up with onion, garlic, and baby carrots, with mashed taters for the starch.

It's Saturday!
Yesterday I made up a batch of spinach and white beans for dinner tonight. And a set of lemon mini-loaves. Threw a pork roast in a crockpot this morning. Today I did mini carrot loaves and sour cream loaves. Cream cheese frosting, spiced honey butter and sweet citrus butter. Gotta wait for the bananas to brown to make the last loaf for the sweet quartet, banana squash loaf.
Also trying out a clementine marmalade that takes a couple days to steep before making into the final product.

Now it's Monday... I really got to get better at putting up notes, hahaha.
Finally caved in a ordered a nutmeg grinder over the weekend- it's my gift from my hubby, I think he got sick of hearing me whine about it.
Broke in my pasta cutter- gunked up my pasta cutter, lol. The main rolling machine is good, but the pasta was way too sticky for the fine cutting attachment. So much for lovely pasta nests for Christmas, hahaha. Still might try orecchiette or perhaps tagliatelle.

Decided to go for the ecig thing. Picked up a couple of disposables last week and we tried them out. Pretty good, but then we had tried a friends ecig a while back and liked that. Over the weekend we picked up a couple of less expensive refillable ecigs. One pack of smokes is 7.30-7.50 and lasts a day or two. One package of refills for the ecig was 6 bucks and had 4 refills, equaling 8 packs of smokes. The main part of it was a 16 dollar kit- the tube and it charges on a USB port. No shit.
We hope to be totally ecig by the holiday weekend. It's way cheaper. Once you figure out pack price, I don't think I saw smokes that cheap as a kid. And it does not stink like cigs, or leave compounds all over. And it can be done where cigs can't anymore, like eateries and pubs.
Yeah, the best solution is to not use the stuff at all. But it's a good step.
Going onto ecigs is a little bit baffling at first. There are a lot of brands, flavors, disposables vs refillables, and different levels of strength just like smokes have full flavor or lites.

Gonna post this now since it's already Tuesday night... 

BAAAD weather!!

Well then, we had ourselves a nasty November spell. Swathing all the way from Tennessee up to the UP. Tornadoes, nasty storms... An upper 60's front driven by a nower 40's front.
It was truly terrible for about a whole 35 minutes from first flush till watery sun started breaking out of the sky.

On a yay note- that radio I paid 15 buck for a couple weeks back really paid itself off- the power died, and the batteries picked up without a hiccup. We were able to keep tuned into the weather after we lost power :) There was a goodly bit of destruction according to reports!

I hate winter power outages- made me super happy we got power back this afternoon, about 24 hours after it went out :) We were figuring sometime tomorrow at the soonest.

We tried out tealight heaters. That's when you take a loaf pan, a couple terra cotta pots, and some tealights to make a little heater. They worked rather nicely for a desk and countertop heater- fortunately, we got power back before needing to see how well they would work in our bedroom.

Got the chance to put plastic up over 3 of the 4 office windows. Really making a difference!

The luffa experiments... Well, the bleaching process went well enough that I felt encouraged to pick the dozen still on the vine that felt "fibrous" enough to pick. I think I left about 10 on the vine that were too squishy to be of use. And I'm really liking using a segment at the kitchen sink- though I think I need to cut some of the rest up a bit longer in segments for a bit bigger sponge. So those all got picked, peeled, and put into bleach solution to sit for a day or few :)

Got in a whole heap of seeds for the Christmas bag, woot! And a couple more big swaps coming in still. And the seed catalogs are starting to come in, so I get to compile a 2014 wishlist :) I'm sure it will be considerably shorter than the 2013 list was. I have quite a bit of growing to do next year to catch up on the going out growing stock!
Next year is going to be a lot of drying beans, perhaps some small gourds. I think I'm going to do up a full round of black tomatoes in the kitty buckets. A lot of greens experiments. Need to figure out if we can set up a spring raised bed or two for early root veggies and perhaps peas. A shitton of flower seeds for wintersowing experimenting.
Luckly enough, we have been saving up a heap of 1 gallon milk jugs and other big plastic jugs for the project. Still need a LOT of regular bagged dirt and perhaps a bale or few of straw to work in with the compost pile.
I think I want to re-arrange the chicken kennel walls/doors. I want to move the center wall to the south wall position. Move the middle door to the south too. Sort of prelim setup into eventual chicken space there. We only want a half dozen at most chickens- well and plenty for eggs and a couple hens in the pot every cutting season. And a lot of goodly bug control, especially ticks!
But I want to blend the back couple spaces into the eventual coop footprint, and gate in the southmost area securely for plant growing and perhaps some storage. Now that I think I have an idea on how to handle the area, time to start setting up with with what we got. 

We have come a long way with the cats since we first brought Tikki into the house. She also responds well to twitchywitchy, lol. We've promised Pooks no more new kitties till well after he is resting next to Moon :)

I found some inspiration the other day with this link: http://themetapicture.com/if-youre-only-going-to-read-one-thing-today-read-this/
It's a story about a man who adopts a dog... and a ways into the troubled relationship when he is just about to give up and is willing to return the dog to the pound is reminded that this pet they got was someone elses companion first, and might need extra patience via a letter from the surrendering owner that the guy didn't open till just before he was going to give his new companion up.

And more food and stuff

Yeah, it's that time of year for a crapton of posts about preserving. Makes me kind of glad, this is the first year I've really needed to make a ton of entries about it.

So the tomato skins from yesterday. Those dried overnight at 125. This morning, I flipped all the skins over- they kind of crackled off in sheets but there were still not dry spots on the underside. Then left them for several more hours. The result was a really dry cracking mess :) I hand crushed all of it onto a plate to ensure it was all properly dry, then filled a recycled mayo jar with it, and tossed it into the freezer to get really extra brittle before pulverizing it with the spice grinder. The resulting powder was about about 5 ounces of powder. Tomato powder can sell for a buck or more an oz, so not too bad for something that otherwise I would have tossed into the compost pile, or folks might toss into the trash.
Yep, the hot peppers and onions are in the dehydrator now. The pound of serrano peppers took up 2 trays-  I just cut off the stem end, sliced in half and put cut side up on trays. The onions that needed to go got minced up in the mini-processor, and filled the other 4 trays on jelly sheets. 

I do have to say, our current compost bucket filling action is really unfair to my eventual worm bins- they would be getting a glut now, but would probably be more starving in winter! I think I should not gauge anything right now to that project. And I have come across some information about worm towers recently that might just end up getting worked into the final raised bed plans.

Finally got off my keister and set up the shelves for the canned goods. My love convinced me that yes indeed the cellar is good enough for storage. So the shelves went up, the goods went down... and all the cases of empties went out to the solarium. Now my kitchen and office now longer quite looks like a crazy canning factory, lol.
All of the salsa is still on the kitchen table of course- I don't shelve canned stuff till after 48 hours of observation. And looking at the pic of all the stuff spread out on the table- I do leave a lot of headspace- several recipes call for 1/4 to 1 inch headspace. I just use the bottom ring on the glass jar for my general headspace. Gives me a good "instant window" on looking at the jars. And that way I don't have to perfect level stuff every time.
And holy crap, I canned three and a half gallons of salsa yesterday.

The first of the red apples were ready, picked 8 pounds of smallish, blemished, and generally not very good for fresh eating apples that were ready to go. Got to try out the new juicer, it's a tool that I will need to get used to, lol. I yielded 1 quart of juice, it's currently in the fridge to decant overnight. I think I might get a pint and a half of juice. This was a good practice run with the juicer :)

I got in the first of my seed trades today, yay! Mammoth sunflower :)
Seeds... I saved the seeds from some serrano peppers, cantaloupe, orange sweet peppers, purple sweet peppers, banana legs peppers, and Methley plums... 
And check this shit out- Methley plums are Japanese in nature- usually grows to a 30 foot plus tree! But I can take the pits, grow them into sproutlings and graft those sproutlings into the peach tree. No kidding. This way I can see if the plums grew true or not from seed, and the Greengage plum can pollinate it. The Greengage does not need a pollinator, but the Methyel does. If the seedlings don't set true fruit, no problem- I can just cut that graft off again. If I want to I can graft other peaches and apricots onto the peach tree already in the orchard. It can be a new life to that tree, using the trunk as the rootstock for new branches of other fruits.
I can do the same thing with the apples and pear trees too- graft other varieties onto the rootstock.

Got cleaning done in the garage, some much needed sorting of recyclables. A few cases of empty bottles went down to the pole barn for later use :) In general that area of the garage looks much nicer :)

And heh, I was just prepping up some taters, large diced with flavorful oils and herbs, and the huge pitty pan, cut into eighths, drizzled with oil and herbs... all to go onto the grill tonight.. And my love popped in and handed me a ring! He printed it off on the 3D printer, it's a perfect pinky ring :) Chain link like a cycle chain on the top, plain band on the bottom. He's so sweet, no wonder why I married him!

Happy Sunday!
Sometimes getting stuff done feels like you are doing more than what it looks like you did, lol. I got the first dozen stones I cast for the walkway by the herb garden. Looks rather nice and gives me a real good idea on just how much more I need to make! Because it's kind of a trickish hill area, I ended up using three of my knot edgers along one side- think I will end up needing to make some more of those. In general I need to pick up some more cement and cast a bunch more stones.
Got a lot of weeding done in the herb garden- I swear, the area just always looks like a jungle, why do weeds always seem to be more rampant that herbs? Did some serious cutting back on the tarragon too- got a huge clump of it hanging to dry in the office :)
Finally planted in the chamomile plants, they seriously needed out of their pots. I put them into the wee folk garden- I think they will do rather nicely there, I hope they spread out a lot.
And I mowed the front half of the yard. It was getting pretty shaggy looking again. I've started in general mowing around the whole apple tree area. I'm glad I wear safety glasses when outside, otherwise I would be sporting a black eye from a frigging apple right now, lol. But the lawn does always look nice when it's freshly mowed. 
The salsa got labeled up and stowed downstairs.

So it's Monday.. a rainy Monday. I was in a funk today, I think it was the weather- I felt under the weather with a clogged up head all day. Not much got done.

We cracked open the first 8 oz jar of salsa last night, ate the whole thing with dinner, lol. It turned out pretty darn good- fresh and salsa-y, a good hit of spice but not too hot for general chowing on. Went rather well with both chips and the veggie skillit I made for dinner, full of spinach, mushrooms, onion, garlic, zucchini, and sweet potato. 

Got some spinach seed sowed today. I trimmed down the Mr. Stripey tomato that is pretty much puke, left the couple branches that actually have something on them, and planted in seed all around. Noticed that several of my Green Arrow peas are starting to pop up too and the mixed lettuce.
Pulled the orange and red sweetie mini bell pepper seeds I had on sprout test- 100% germination, yay! They got packaged up and put into their proper spot. I'm waiting a couple more days on the yellows, they are germinating slower for some reason. Started a sprout test of the cantaloupe seed from the cantaloupe I got from the produce place.
Did some sorting of the seed list I have- mostly figuring out what tomatoes are what. I have a nice collection each in blacks, oranges, reds, and yellows, and a couple whites. No greens yet. And a nice array of canning, drying, and of course fresh eating toms.

Got in some of my seed trades today, hooray! Blacktail Mountain melon, Manzano orange hot pepper, bread poppy, Santa Fe Grande pepper, Golden zucchini, valerian, feverfew, german chamomile, and yerba mansa. I also got a response on my inquiry about trying a variety of garlic, and it looks like I'm going to be sent a newbie box to try out in a few weeks when the garlic is cured, hooray! I will for sure be looking forward to that package coming in the mail. 

But all in all, a pretty blah day. I decided to make Mom's hamburger casserole because I wanted comfort food.. 
1 lb hamburger- raw
1 medium onion, diced
2 pounds carrots, peeled and sliced
5 or so russets, peeled and sliced
1 can peas, drained
1 28 oz or two 14.5 oz cans chopped tomatoes, drained

Layer in this order to make 2 layers. Burger, onion, potato, carrot, peas, and tomatoes. Bake in a covered dish at 350 for two hours. Make it without salt or pepper, and season at will when serving. 

The cattails along the easement drive are ready to pick and preserve. I gave a shoutout to my friends to see if anyone wanted any, but I think I might just pick them all and preserve them just because I can :) I can figure out something to do with them if no one wants them. I need to get out to the back 40 and see where the milkweeds are- I want to grab a few pods to plant in the sanctuary for butterflies future use and save a bunch for sharing. And there is an adopt a milkweed for Monarch Butterflies exchange on Gardenweb, and I want to adopt some people. I think I need to pick some of the wild blackberries for sharing around too. 

Happy Tuesday!

So after being all blech yesterday.. Today the sun was shining, and it was time to do stuff. 

Started out by mowing the back yard and sanctuary. The grass was still a bit damp, but everything mowed well enough. Then we strung up clothesline in the backyard, though I think we might not have strung it quite tight enough, it sags, lol. But more than sufficent to hang linens out on the line to dry- outdoor dried linens always smell great. 
Got the round knot stones over to the north side of the house where they belong, and hauled the large hexagon stones down to the bee corner. Dug up all the weeds, raked everything out, and dropped the stones in place. I still need to make several more before that corner is done, lol. While I was doing that, I dug up the last of the irises that were there and didn't get transplanted last time- those are already dropped off at the post office for one of my friends :) 
And I took the first whack at digging up the big batch of daffodils down in that corner. I got a lot of them, but I doubt I got them all. Felt like I was digging a hole to China the things went so deep, lol. 

 This is the basket full of bulbs- yes, that is a golf ball basket :)

 This is all the bulbs spread out on the driveway so the dirt dries up. They were in the sun when I first laid them out. After the dirt dried, I rubbed each one by hand to get all the dirt off and check for damage before bagging them up. There are about 140 total there, but I ended up bagging 125 because some were damaged from my initial digging in the area.
I'm still not absolutely positive where I want the final bed for these to be. I'm thinking perhaps since there are so many of them, I might be justified in tearing out the whole corner of ditch lillies on the solarium and replacing that whole mess with daffodils instead. I do not like ditch lillies, and heavens knows I've got more of them all over this property than I could ever know what to do with. On the other hand, I very much love daffodils, so heck yeah I will plant them in.
I shudder to think about how much this many bulbs would cost if I purchased them- some are smaller and would be multiple in the bag for a few bucks, but most are huge and would likely be sold individually for a couple bucks each. I'm thinking perhaps I will set some of the smaller ones aside for trading or sending to friends.

Got a bunch of cattails cut today for drying too :) I'm not sure how many, but at least three dozen, lol. An armful of the things. And I left a couple handfuls out there too. The easement drive strip is so nice for this.
Also checked milkweed- handily enough, there is one in pod outside the solarium door- see the good things that can happen when you don't keep up with weeding? By the feel of it, I still got a couple weeks yet at least before the ones on the back 40 are worth harvesting. But yeah, I will go back there soon just to make sure.