Page listing for the category:
This week has been yet another busy one! I baked bread everyday (2 loaves), crocheted, worked out in the yard cleaning up, plus keeping up the house and fixing meals from scratch everyday this week. I’m pooped, but feel like I’ve really accomplished a lot this week!
I finished up 4 afghans for the Granny Square Project and 25 baby hats for the Hats ‘N’ Hearts Marathon.
Here’s a picture of Riley wearing his new “hat”….lol….seems he’s got it on the wrong end!
Yesterday, we spent the day running errands, we went to Homestead Heritage and bought 45 pounds of wheat berries, and some bean and pea seeds. We bought Early Snap Peas, Scarlet Runner Beans, Yard Long Red Noodle BEans, Blue Lake Pole Beans, Red Black-eyed peas, Christmas Limas, and Pickling cucumbers. I also got all the grocery shopping done. We didn’t get to work in the yard, because we had a b ig wind storm, 55-58 mph winds which whipped up a big dust storm.
Today though we got to work a lot in the yard. I built 2 garden bed frames and Marty tilled the beds. We now have 2 full 24 ft by 4 ft beads. We also are going to plant all our pole beans and climing stuff along the fence line so we won’t have to put up cages. I built one bed for my peas there and will be building more next weekend. We also planted 2 flats with 20 green zebra tomatoes, 15 yellow pear cherry tomatoes, 6 habanero chilies, 9 jalapeno peppers, 12 each of red cherry tomatoes, roma tomatoes, brandywine tomatoes, rutgers tomatoes, jubilee tomatoes and long thin cayenne peppers.
Next weekend we’ll be planning a small plot of radish and will also be buying some winter squash seeds. In March, we’ll be planting on this schedule:
8TH – RADISH
18TH – summer squash, winter squash, tomato transplants
25th – cantaloupe, sweet corn, eggplant transplants (if we can find), lettuce and pepper transplants
25-26th – lima bush and pole beans, snap bush and pole beans, cucumber, pumpkin, tomato transplants.
26th – Southern Peas
Also, I know that a lot of y’all have emailed me, and since we have limited internet time, it will take me some time to answer them and I will be posting answers on my blog for the most part. All the comments and email from the last 2 weeks or so will be answered next weekend when we get online again. This will give me a chance to really review the questions and write up answers ahead of time so I can just copy and paste.
On to more pictures!
Me building Garden bed frames
Flowers that popped up in the middle of my yard
Flat planted with tomatoes and peppers
Garden bed progress so far
Well my time is up and I need to get out of here! I will post answers to current questions next week! Miss y’all!!
I tried several new recipes this past week that I thought I’d pass along. They are all Nourishing Traditions compatable. What I also liked about them is that they don’t contain more than a pound of meat. My husband insists on having some meat in most meals. He only really likes to have 1 meatless meal each week, but he’s okay with me using less meat and more other stuff.
Beef, Cabbage & Rice
This is a recipe that I invented that my oldest son now begs for!
2 cups raw brown rice
4 cups warm filtered water
4 tbsp. buttermilk
Place rice, water & buttermilk in saucepan and cover. Leave in a warm place for at least 7 hours. I usually mix this up first thing in the morning and let sit until dinner time.
To the rice mixture, add:
1 can rotel tomatoes
3-4 tbsp. granulated chicken boulillon
Bring to a boil, reduce heat and cover. Let cook over lowest heat possible for 45- 60 minutes (until rice is done).
Meanwhile, combine in a skillet
1 stick real butter
1 lb. Ground beef
½ head cabbage, sliced
Cook the meat until no longer pink and add the cabbage and stir fry until cabbage is crisp-tender. When rice mixture is done add the meat/cabbage mixture and stir to mix. I served this with homemade bread, but my husband really likes it with corn tortillas, with a little grated cheddar cheese.
Broccoli & Macaroni with Ground Turkey
This recipe turned out really well and is now going into regular circulation
1 large bunch broccoli
6 cloves garlic, chopped
½ cup real butter
4 cups whole wheat spirals or macaroni
salt & pepper
¾ cup Parmesan cheese
½ cup dry bread crumbs
1-1/2 cup grated cheddar cheese
1 lb. Ground turkey, browned
Bring a large pot of water to boil. Add one tbsp. salt. Cut off broccoli florets into 1 inch pieces and peel stalks and chop into 1 inch pieces. Steam until tender. Add the pasta to the boiling water and cook until tender. While pasta cooks, melt butter in skillet and brown ground turkey and garlic. Drain the pasta and mix together the pasta, steamed broccoli, salt, pepper, ground turkey, Parmesan cheese, bread crumbs, and grated cheddar. I serve this with homemade bread and a green salad.
Beef & Cabbage Curry
This recipe was hot and spicy and Marty LOVED it!
1 medium green cabbage
4 medium onions
4 cloves garlic
½ cup real butter
½ tsp. Cayenne
4 tbsp. cilantro
4 tsp. Cumin
1 lb. Ground beef
salt
2 large lemons
Cut cabbage in half and remove core. Slice into ¼ inch slices. Set aside. Mince onion and garlic. Melt buter in a large saucepan (I used my smallest stockpot). Fry onion and garlic about 5 minutes over medium heat. Stir frequently. Add spices and salt. Stir well. Cook about 2 minutes. Add meat and brown. Add cabbage and stir to mix with meat. Cover and cook until cabbage is soft, about 15 minutes. Stir occasionally. While cabbage cooks, juice the lemons. Sprinkle with lemon juice and stir and serve. I served with homemade bread.
Be forewarned, this is going to be a long, photo filled post 
Let’s see, what has been going on around here since our Internet was turned off…
We discovered that we have 3-4 free Internet spots in Hillsboro that we can use to get online with our own computers. So instead of updating 2-3 times a week from the library’s computer, I will be updating probably only once a week, usually on Friday, Saturday or Sunday. This makes it nice, because I can upload pictures and videos now, unlike if we used the library computer. YEA!!
I baked 10 loaves of bread this week using fresh ground whole grains. My family is really enjoying all the fresh bread…Marty thinks I’m spoiling him!! Our health food store where we buy our grain is going out of business, so we had to find a new source of grain. Homestead Heritage sells grain there, so we’re going to buy it from there until we can make a bulk order. I think we’re going to try to go in with some other folks and buy it from Walton Feeds.
I’ve been busy crocheting this week. I finished up my swap items for the Crochet Mania Kitchen/Bath Swap. I also made up a bunch of new dishcloths for myself. I got my shawl from my swap partner this week. I don’t have a picture of it, but it’s beautiful! It’s a hand knitted wrap in navy yarn, in this really pretty vine type pattern. I will try to post a picture of it next week, I just kept forgetting to take a picture of it. I also got in a bunch of baby hats for the Hats ‘N’ Hearts Marathon, again, I forgot to take pictures!
I’m really enjoying cooking the Nourishing Traditions way and have made a couple of recipes that the family has really loved.
Chili Cabbage & Beef
1 lb. Ground beef
¼ head cabbage
1 can
tomato sauce
Chili powder to taste (I used 1 tbsp. or so)
Brown the
ground beef with the cabbage. Drain. Pour over 1 can of tomato sauce, and add 1
tbsp. chili powder. Let simmer 15-20 minutes. Serve. We served it with homemade
bread and even the kids liked this one!
This was a quick lunch I made for the kids and I on Friday, and they LOVED it!
Rice & Cabbage
Brown Rice
Chicken Broth
Chopped cabbage
Soak the rice overnight as described in Nourishing Traditions. Drain
rice and cook in chicken broth. When rice is done, mix in chopped cabbage.
Serve. My oldest has requested that I make this again this week for dinner, only
we’re going to add ½ lb. Browned hamburger and some rotel tomatoes (he said it
needed to be a little spicier).
Saturday, we spent out in the yard working again. Marty built a mini chicken tractor for the quail. Currently, it’s housing the baby chicks that hatched a few weeks back. We had 3 quail eggs hatch and this morning there were 2 baby chicks in the incubator, with more expected over the next few days. We’re going to try and order about 100 chicks next week, so Marty’s going to have to get busy getting a big brooder ready for them! We also built an automatic feeder for the dogs.
Today, Marty has plans on building a few more things and probably starting some veggies in flats. We bought a bunch of seeds this weekend, Tomatoes, carrots, peppers, okra, squash, cucumber, popcorn, and green beans. We also bought some seeds for my herb gardens basil, cilantro, thyme, dill, parsley, spearmint, peppermint and chives. I think Marty is going to build some of the garden boxes for my herb beds today. If all goes well, we’re going to have a lot of good things to eat this spring, summer and fall, with lots of leftovers to put up for winter! Praise GOD!!
We’ve also been listening to the Michael Pearl sermons on Romans every night before bed and have REALLY enjoyed them! If anyone knows about some other similar free sermons online that we can download, please send me the link! We’ve really enjoyed this time together and we’re both learning so much!
Well that’s about all that’s been going on here this week, so on to the pictures!!
Quail
Just hatched baby quail
Baby quail going into the brooder.
Cold Frame
Building Mini Quail Tractor
Chicks born a few weeks ago in the quail tractor
These next 2 are videos of Riley helping to build the quail tractor…
Building Automatic Dog Feeder
Miscellaneous Photos
Riley playing with a Tonka truck that was Marty’s when he was little
Cat & Dogs
Kitty
Dot
Mae
Just Hatched Chicks & Eggs in Incubator
Colt bought a new game called Zoo Tycoon, and he decided to play it all weekend instead of joining us outside on Saturday, so there are no pictures of him. But Colt will be working today so hopefully we’ll have some pictures of him next update! Well we need to head home now! Enjoy!!
I promised to let y’all know how my soaked grain bread turned out…it was really yummy!!! Today has been a really busy day, working on the gardens. We built a cold frame, started some seeds and put in the cold frame, planted the lettuce and spinach, built 2 onion/garlic boxes, planted the onions and garlic and Colt turned over the ground for his garden. Be forewarned…there are lots of pictures in this post!!!
Building the Cold Frame
Marty bought 4 of these big glass windows at a garage sale, this past summer. We paid all of $10 for all 4 of them. One is used on our solar hot water heater and he used one to make a cold frame this afternoon.
Here we are building the Cold Frame
All the wood we used for all of the project today was free. Marty brings home all the extra ends and pieces of plywood from work. The frame around all our garden bed will be built out of it and will be free!! Gotta love FREE!!
Into the cold frame with the tomatoes, cilantro, rosemary, lavender and agave!
Our Chicks & Quail
Here are some pictures of the chicks we hatched a few weeks back along with the quail that Marty bought a couple of weeks ago. Can you believe how big the chicks are getting!!
Planting Seed & Putting Them in Cold Frame
We planted a lot of seeds an put them in the cold frame. We planted green beans, royal burgundy beans, zucchini, yellow squash, roma tomatoes, peas, bell peppers, and corn.
Corn being planted in newspaper pots so they can go straight into the ground.
Lettuce & Spinach Planted
We got 15 lettuce plants and 9 spinach plants in the ground.
Colt Digging His Garden
Marty built Colt a 4′x4′ frame for his own garden and Colt got busy turning it over. Colt’s doing research and will let us know what he wants to plant by this next weekend.
Building Onion & Garlic Boxes And Planting Them
Marty built 2′x4′ boxes to plant our onions and garlic. We planted lots of yellow and red onions as well as garlic.
So, as you can see, we had a busy day! So far we’re still online, but I imagine we’ll be turned off tomorrow, so future posts will be made when we can go to the library or one of the free internet place around here. I’m sure looking forward to when all the veggies are ready to start eating them!!
We got some wheat berries finally to grind, so I ground some and am in the process of making my very first batch of Soaked Grain Bread, in the spirit of Nourishing Traditions! I can’t wait to give it a try tomorrow. I will put it in the oven tomorrow after church, about 22 hours after I mixed it up! Here’s the recipe that I came up with, it’s a variation of the One-Rise Whole Wheat Bread recipe I’ve been using.
Susan’s Soaked Grain Bread
1 tbsp. honey
1/2 cup warm water
2 tbsp. yeast
2 cups buttermilk (lukewarm)
1 tbsp. sea salt
1/4 cup honey
1/2 cup lard
8 cups whole wheat flour freshly ground
In a small bowl, dissolve the 1 tbsp. honey into the warm water, sprinkle 2 tbsp. yeast over the top and stir. Let stand until frothy.
In the mixer’s bowl, mix the eggs, salt, 1/4 cup honey and lard. Add the lukewarm milk and 3 cups flour. Stir and add yeast. Continue to stir about 3-4 minutes, until well blended. with mixer on, add remaining 5 cups of flour one at a time. Let mix well after each addition. Let knead with bread hook for 10 minutes.
Let rest for 15 minutes. After the dough has rested, punch down and knead 10 more minutes with dough hook. Divide dough into 2 halves and shape into loaves. Place into 2 loaf pans and press down with hands to fill corners of pans. Cover with a clean muslin towel and let rise/soak in a warm, draft free area for 12-24 hours.
After bread has soaked for required time, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake for 40-45 minutes. After 45 minutes, remove one loaf from a pan and tap the bottom of the loaf with your finger. If it sounds hollow, the bread is finished. Remove immediately from pans and place on wire racks to cool.
Anyway, I will let you know tomorrow how it turns out, if we’re still online. If we’re finally offline at the house tomorrow, I will let you know the next time I can get online at the library or free interenet spot. I’m hoping it turns out really yummy!!
Bread just put in the pans to begin soaking!
wheat berries!! Waiting for to be ground and used in my next batch of bread.
Some of my collection on antique canning jars that I use to hold my baking ingredients.
I’m going to be taking a break from blogging for a while. We’re going to be having our internet turned off tomorrow. We’ve had constant problems with this ISP, our internet is down at least once a week or we can’t download email or it’s really slow. We pay this company a lot each month for high speed internet, and we’re lucky to get dial up speed at times. Not to mention that their customer service reps have lied to us numerous times, have lied in the notes they put on our account (wrote in notes that they told us something that they didn’t tell us), and charged our debit card without permission. And to top it off, it is very likely that someone from their office is behind the nearly $600,
stolen from off our debit card.
Unforturnately, it’s the only high speed internet in the area. So we’re investigating other options, including satellite, but that may be to expensive. If worse comes to worse, I suppose that we can get plain old dial up again, which would require having a land line phone again and would still equal out to about what we were paying for high speed. I”m not thrilled with this, but Marty and I agree that it’s for the best right now.
In the meantime, I will be going to the library once or twice a week to check email and to update my blog. I won’t be able to post picures and such from there, so when we’re back online, you can nearly count on a long post with lots of pictures!
If you need to email me, you can do so to my yahoo account only, susanscraps414@yahoo.com. I will check my email on the days I’m at the library, so please be patient if I don’t get back with you immediately. I’m sure going to miss everyone, but I’ll still be around, just not as much! I will still be taking items for the Granny Square Project and the the Hats ‘N’ Hearts Marathon.
I wanted to take a minute to introduce you to my 2 newest household servants. Please meet Miss Nutrimill and Miss Bosch!
These were given to us as a gift from a very sweet and thoughtful friend. I can’t tell you how much we appreciate her thinking of us, she has certainly been a BIG blessing to us!
We haven’t used the grinder yet, we have to wait until this weekend when we can buy some grain but I used the mixer to make up a batch of biscuits last night and made some bread with it this afternoon. I can’t believe how much better Miss Bosch works than Miss Kitchenaid (which died on us just 1 year after purchase!).
Doesn’t my bread look pretty! It still needs to rise for about 20 minutes more, but it looks fantastic right now even! Tonight, we’re going to eat black-eyed peas with salt pork and homemade bread. I’ve got the peas cooking right now and I’ll put the bread in the oven about 1 hour before Marty’s expected home. I know he’ll enjoy walking into a house that smells like homemade bread!
Question: Anonymous has left a new comment on your post “Garden Update“: Susan, What do you use for mulch?
Answer: We use a variety of things. We have a compost pile that we put grass clippings, plant clippings and scraps, vegetable scraps from the kitchen, etc. We use this on our garden as well as grass clippings, plant matter, and small limbs and pieces of wood that we run through the chipper. We’ve also used sunflowers that have been run through the chipper. Pretty much anything that’s plant matter or wood gets run through the chipper and used. It’s much cheaper than having to purchase hay and such.
Yesterday evening we were able to get our broccoli and cabbage in the ground. Marty got the beds all tilled and they we all started planting. We ended up planting 18 broccoli plants, 9 red cabbage plants and 8 green cabbage plants. We still need to plant the 9 spinach plants and 18 romaine lettuce plants, but Marty’s got to build the frame to go around that bed and till it. Hopefully we’ll get to it sometime this week, but if not, we’ll do it this weekend.
Marty tilling the beds
Broccoli bed planted and mulched (1st bed). Second bed is where the cabbage will go.
Close up of a broccoli plant
Riley had fun “saving” the earthworms from the tiller! LOL!! He would grab them and throw them in one of the beds that weren’t being tilled. At first he was a bit scared of them, but after he held one he decided that he liked them!
Marty tucking in the drip irrigation, both beds planted and mulched
Purple cabbage planted
Green cabbage planted
This is our second year planting broccoli. Last year we only planted 5, but it did really well and everyone here likes it, so we planted lots more This is our first year planting cabbage, so we’ll see how it does!
Colt bought a rocket the other day at Wal-mart, but he got the wrong size engines, so he used one of the engines to make a rocket car…
This weekend was beautiful! A good part of Saturday, we spent running around doing errands. Sunday was a nice and sunny springlike day. We spent the afternoon working on the garden. It got dark before we were able to get anything actually planted. We bought 12 broccoli plants, 12 romaine lettuce plants, 6 cabbage plants, 6 red cabbage plants and 6 spinach plants, they will get in the ground sometime this week, one a day Marty gets home early enough. We still need to do a little tilling and finish the border around one of the front gardens. I imagine that next weekend we will be working on gardens again, weather permitting.
Today, Marty stayed home sick, in fact we’re all pretty sick with an upper respiratory type infection. I think it’s just allergies because of this crazy weather. Anyway, I went into town to get us lunch and the kids and I had a picnic on the front lawn. It’s another beautiful sunny day here. These are some pictures that I took today…
Riley eating his lunch at our impromtu picnic.
The incredibly blue sky today!
One of the garden beds nearly done. We still need to do some tilling and then get the plants in. Over where the ice chest is, is were another bed will be. Marty weed-eated it down to the dirt and then raked all of the stuff up and shredded it. It will go back down on the garden as compost.
All our plants in the wagon waiting to go in the ground.
