Spring

Posted on by

With two consecutive days of 50 degree weather (balmy huh!) my thoughts are turning to gardening. I am itching to get out and get my spring garden planted! I love picking early lettuce and spinach, and watching for those little pea shoots to come up! In past years I would be out as early as this planting all my cool weather crops, but this year we have so much snow (say prayer of thanks) that I am sure it will be a few more weeks before I can go and work my soil. This year I am thinking of doing some box gardens. I have a small garden plot in my yard, but I want to do more. Last year I had my PIC dig up a bunch of grass to make my garden bigger and he told me that after this he would be doing no more digging up grass and expanding gardens! (can you hear him putting his foot down? ha! I think for the last 7 years I have had him digging up grass to expand either the garden or a flower bed, the poor guy is plain sick of it!) So, to get around his decree I am going to try box gardening, I won’t have to pull up any grass, just plop the boxes down, round-up the grass underneath, and vola, we are good to go! Now I just have to convince my PIC that this will be a good idea…….

I can see my mom, shaking her head, saying “you are just like your Dad!”

Beauty

Posted on by
I was puttering around the house this afternoon and something caught my eye out the back window. So I grabbed the camera, and went out the back door.

My back yard is pretty much open land. There is about a million acres of nothing behind us. It can be a nuisance; there are snake, bugs, weeds, wild fires and mice. There is also a lot of beauty. Flowers in the spring time, the smell of wet sage (reminds me of the ranch) after a summer storm, sunflowers in the summer and beautiful shades of yellow in the fall. In the winter we have snow up there (or dead grass depending on the year) with beautiful snow drifts and deer tracks. The one thing we have year round is breath taking sunsets, and lovely skies.

This is what I see out my back door

This is what I saw when I walked out on the back step.

There is no need for words.

This world is so beautiful.

Then I looked down at my poor dead, empty flower beds and saw all the little bird tracks. Kind of cute huh.

(Hopefully in two months time that flower bed will be full of daffodils, I planted 100 bulbs in that bed this fall)

and on the other side, next to my cold dead roses, more tracks.

There are moments in our hum-drum days, when God says “stop, look, be filled.” If we stop, look, our weary, tired souls will be filled.

Are we allowing God to fill it?

Adventures into Apple Butter

Posted on by
My adventure into apple butter didn’t start out as I had planned. In fact I never planned on making apple butter at all. I wanted to make apple sauce and apple jelly. One winter when I was little we had a whole bunch of what my mom called “apple sauce” really it was more like apple pie preserves. It was quart jars of apples pealed and sliced with syrup of sugar and cinnamon. I remember really liking them, and the last few years I was toying with the idea of making some in the fall when you could buy apples on the side of the road. Then my in-laws made a whole big batch of apple jelly. I had never heard of, or tasted apple jelly. I was really good and a really pretty soft pink color. So I determined that this year I was going to make my apple preserves and apple jelly.
I went and bought two boxes of apples; I looked on the internet and found a recipe for apple preserves that looked easy enough. I spent all of one morning peeling and slicing my apples, carefully saving the peels and cores for the jelly. I added cups and cups of sugar and cinnamon and lemon juice, stirred it all up in the biggest bowls I had and packed them into quart jars, 24 of them to be exact, and processed them for the amount of time the recipe called for. I was on a roll! While doing that I boiled my apple peels and cores, strained them and added sugar and pectin and bottled those too. My kitchen was a mess. Sticky sugary counters and floors, a sink piled high with dishes, it was hot with all the canning and boiling water. I was tired, but satisfied, look at all the food I was preserving and packing away for my family…what a great mom I was!

Then everything crumbled. None of my jars of apples sealed, none, not a single gal-durn blasted jar! (Do you like my pioneer swear words? Ha!) So here I am in my steamy sticky mess with 24 quart of apples not sealed! (I think this is where I burst into tears and drank a whole two litter of diet coke and ate all the chocolate I could find) Then to top things off my jelly didn’t, well, jell! So now I have 24 quarts of unsealed apples and 24 pints of un-jelled apple jelly! (This is where I call Mike, in tears, pulling my hair out, wishing I were a drinking woman, and tell him he better bring home dinner or I just might need to be committed that very night)

 

I cried over the computer to my friend Katie and she calmly sympathizes with me and says “why don’t you make apple butter?” Apple butter? Hmmmm…..”How do I do that” I ask. She tells me to dump all my jars of apples in a crock pot and let it cook for about 12 hours, until it cooks down and thickens up. Then put them in pint jars and process them like I would jam. So that is what I did. I let it cook over night, and the house smelled wonderful that next morning! We had warm apple butter on pancakes and I was sold! I did another batch that day and ended up with about 24 pints (we are already half way through it.) I will defiantly be doing apple butter again. As for the apple jelly? Well, I have 24 pints of apple syrup in my basement (I know there is a way to re-process the whole batch and add more pectin and such, but I just didn’t have it in me, maybe another day) if you would like to try some, let me know, I will let you have a jar, or two, or three…. So there you have it, my adventures in Apple Butter.So here is the recipe, as best as I can remember it, the thing about apple butter is that it isn’t an exact thing, you can adjust to your preference.

Big box of apples, pealed, cored and sliced (you can save the cores and peels to make apple juice or apple jelly, however you ladies are on your own with that!)
Lots of sugar (4 to 5 cups)
½ cup lemon juice
Cinnamon to taste
Nutmeg to taste.

Mix it all up, taste it, adjust it to your liking. Throw it all into a crock pot (I wouldn’t prepare more apples that your crock pot can handle, just do it one batch at a time) or you can throw it into a big pot on the stove, just be careful it doesn’t get too hot. Cook it on low for about twelve hours until it thickens to your preference. Spoon it into pint jars and process (I used the cold pack method) 30 minutes. I would think that you could freeze it too, if you didn’t want to go to the trouble of processing it. Or you can make small batches and just keep it in the fridge. This is a very forgiving recipe!

Apple butter is good on, pancakes, scones, biscuits, French toast, peanut butter sandwiches, toast or rolls. It is good mixed with yogurt, Cottage cheese or granola. I like it warmed up on scones and pancakes.

I hope you all like it!

Old English Scones

Posted on by
I always thought that scones were a type of deep fried bread. Around here that is what people typically think of when someone says “scones”. Actually scones are a type of flakey baked bread, a lot like a big biscuit. English scones are served mostly with tea or coffee, and since I usually don’t partake of coffee or tea we eat it with milk for breakfast. This is a great food storage recipe. Your kidlets and husband will like it, it is easy to modify to suit the taste of your family, and it can be used for dinner, snacks or breakfast. So here goes!


Here are our ingredients:
2 cups flour (white or wheat)
1/4 cup sugar
1 Tbsp Baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup shortening
1 egg
1/2 cup milk

The only thing that can’t come out of your food storage is the egg, unless of course keeping chickens in your backyard is part of your plan. If you don’t have an egg, just use a little more milk. You can also use buttermilk or yogurt in place of the milk.

First you mix all the dry ingredients


Then add shortening

Then you “cut” the shortening in, using a pastry cutter, or two butter knives or a fork. You don’t want the shortening to mix into the dry ingredients, it needs to look like a bunch of flour and pea sized clumps of shortening.

If I am making this for breakfast I will mix everything up to this point the night before then cover it in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge. You don’t have to do this step and it will still be yummy!

Here we are the next morning just coming out of the fridge. (Yawn)

(I forgot to add the cinnamon the night before, I like to add cinnamon, I think I am discovering that cinnamon is my favorite spice)

add your egg

and milk, or buttermilk, or yogurt…..

Mix it all up until it is a crumbly mess. Don’t mix it up until it is all combined well, that is what makes it flakey and crispy

With your hands moosh it into a ball

Put it on your pan (or stone, I like useing a baking stone for this) and with your fingers spread it out to about a inch thick, using a pizza cutter make 8 wedges.

sprinkle it with cinnamon and sugar, or sugar, or chocolate chips, or colored sprinkles….whatever

Bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes until it is golden crispy

I serve it with apple butter (this stuff is to die for! Thanks Katie for talking me through making my apple butter)

Yummy, yummy, yummy!!!!

This recipee is really easy to modify! If you want to use it for dinner don’t put any sugar in it and it is like a biscuit. Or (one of my favorite ways) you can add fruit. I like blueberries. When you add fruit double the sugar, and add frozen or fresh fruit when you add the wet ingredients. I like it with cinnamon and chopped apples. You could add chocolate chips or nuts too. Serve it with jam, apple sauce, cold milk, hot chocolate, diet coke, tea or coffee ( if that is what moves you).

(if I am serving this as breakfast I am learning that I need to double the recipe for my family of 7, or serve something with it, fresh fruit, scrambled eggs or sausage)

Ain’t I Lucky

Posted on by
My Valentine’s gift came in the mail today, well really, Mr UPS dropped it off. Dadzoo CANNOT keep a secrect so while I ran out quickly to vote (did everybody vote and did you vote for the correct guy?) he un-boxed it and had it sitting out when I got home. He bought me a print of my “momzoo” picture, the one at the top of my blog and had it matted and framed!!! Isn’t that so thoughtful! I think he loves me the best, and I think I have the bestest husband in the whole world. (sorry gals, you might think that your guy is the best, but your wrong)



Tommorow I am going to post another yummy breakfast item that can be made with food storage stuff…..