This recipe is based on the “Cabbage Roll Casserole” from Keeper of the Home. I changed it around a bit to my family’s liking and turned it into a crockpot dish. I love using my crockpot, especially in the warmer months and so you will most likely be seeing quite a few of them up on this blog. The fellas liked it pretty well, it has an interesting flavor. While not a recipe I would fix every week, it will certainly be returning to our table from time to time…especially when cabbage is really cheap. By the way, the fellas renamed it unRolls, since it’s not really cabbage rolls.
Crockpot Cabbage unRolls
1 lb. ground turkey
3 garlic cloves, minced (I used homemade pickled garlic cloves)
1 onion, chopped
1 can tomato sauce
1 can chili flavored diced tomatoes
1 small can tomato paste
1/3 cup apple cider vinegar
1 tbsp. honey (I used raw)
1/2 tbsp. chili powder
salt & pepper to taste
1 head cabbage, chopped
Put the ground turkey into the crockpot and break it all up. Add the remaining ingredients and mix well. Cover and cook on low all day (6 hours) or on high for 4 hours. Stir it often to help break up the meat and make sure it doesn’t burn. If it starts to burn on high, turn it down to low.
We served it with some nice garlic bread that I bought at the store. I think it would also be good served with brown rice or with some cooked brown rice mixed into it.
It’s time once again for another Fix-It Friday over at i heart faces! After a few weeks of really tricky photos to edit, this week’s photo of Angie’s daughter was chosen as one that we could just have fun with…it’s a super-fun one to edit creatively and also gives an opportunity for cloning distracting elements out of the background.
I think this is a fun picture, but it does have some distracting elements (the pink thing on the left and the sign on the right). I also feel that the girl gets somewhat lost in all the distractions. This is how I corrected the photo in Photoshop Elements 7:
I first cloned out the pink thing on the left and then I cropped the photo (at a tiny bit of an angle) to bring the girl more in focus, but leaving the interesting things in the background there (the bridge)
I then ran the smart fix, auto levels and auto contrast.
Ran the Pioneer Woman (PW) “Boost” action and then flattened
Ran the sepia tone action (the one built into PSE7) and set it to 63% opacity
I duplicated the sepia tone layer and added an unsharp mask, set to Amount: 90%, Radius: 100.0, and Threshold: 4. Then flattened.
I then ran Coffee Shop’s “Perfect Portrait” action and did the following: Sharpen-0ff, brighten-off, vivid color-brushed the entire photo and set to 50% opacity, color pop-off, urban grit-brushed on trees and grass and set to 15% opacity, white teeth-off, white whites-off, eye define-off, bright eyes-off, soft skin-on but no change, dodge/burn-off, & vignette-set to 15% opacity. Then flattened.
Added an adjustment layer set to hue: 0, saturation: +25, light: 0, then flattened
Ran My Four Hens Photography (MFHP) “Cherry Cream” action and then flattened.
Ran PW “Cooler” action and then flattened
Ran PW “Lovely” action with just the “Lovely & Ethereal” selected., flattened
Ran PW “Cooler” action again and then flattened.
Finally, ran Mama Ziggy’s “Sharpen for the Web” action.
Here’s my edited version:
This was a really fun photo to work on and I think my edit turned out pretty well. The photo had so much interest and I hope that my crop and edit really brought it out a bit more.
This was a new recipe that I tried tonight and to say it was a hit wouldn’t remotely express how well my family liked it. It was super simple and absolutely YUMMY! I love crockpot recipes, especially in the warm months, because the crockpot doesn’t heat up our house like the oven does. This recipe had really great flavor and makes a simple, yet healthy meal!
Cream Cheese Crockpot Chicken
2 lb. uncooked frozen boneless skinless chicken breasts
3 cup cooked pinto beans
1 (15 oz can) diced chili flavored tomatoes, drained
1 cup salsa
8 oz. cream cheese
3 tsp. garlic powder
salt & pepper to taste
Put the frozen chicken breasts in a crockpot and cover with the beans, tomatoes, salsa and garlic powder. Cook on high for 4-5 hours or until chicken is cooked. Place the block of cream cheese on top. Cook for an additional 30 minutes. Stir to mix the cream cheese into the sauce. The stirring should cause the chicken to shred.
We ate it served on flour tortillas topped with grated cheddar cheese. You can also serve it with brown rice, but my family thought it made better tacos. They ate it all up and begged for more!
I stumbled across these this afternoon and though I’d share! You can read “Little House in the Big Woods”, “Little House on the Prairie”, “Farmer Boy”, “On the Banks of Plum Creek”, “The Long Winter” and “These Happy Golden Years”, FREE online!
Just had to share my find with y’all! I own all the books, but this is such a popular book with homeschoolers, finding it free online was great! Enjoy!
This week’s theme for You Capture over at I Should Be Folding Laundry is “Spring”. Spring always brings to mind flowers to me. Here in Texas spring means wildflowers and roses…that’s when both start blooming around my house. My photo for today is of a pink rose that was growing at my husband’s shop. I just love them!
Aperature Priority
F-Stop: f/6.3
MAV: f/3.5
ISO: 400
FL: 42.0 mm
Lens: Olympus Zuiko Digital 14-42mm 1:3.5-5.6
Edited in PSE7
We’ve been seeing these buckets around for several years, but have only decided to try it just this year. Basically it’s the poor-man’s version of the Topsey Turvy tomato planter. We’ve heard so many great things about growing things this way that we finally decided to give it a try. To start off, we decided to only plant 2 of them. We put tomatoes in the bottom and green beans in the tops Marty, Riley and I worked on this project together.
Marty and his youngest helper
The first thing Marty had to do was cut out a circle in the bottom of the bucket. He did this a couple of weeks back:
Marty cutting holes in buckets for hanging tomato planters
After you do that, you will want to add your tomato plant. Marty tore out a section of newspaper and wrapped it around the tomato plant first, before inserting the plant, from the inside of the bucket. This helps to keep the tomato plant from falling out.
newspaper circling root part of tomato plant.
Then we added a layer of worm dirt. This was dirt that had been finely sifted and had worms living in it. So it’s full of all sorts of healthy things and lots of worm casings. IF I had thought of it, I would have added a layer of egg shells first, which would have provided the tomato with lots of calcium which prevents blossom end rot. But due to hormonal memory loss (LOL!), I absolutely forgot about it until we were done…I’d even been saving egg shells!
Worm dirt layer
The next layer was of some of our good compost dirt, dug out of the compost pile and shifted to remove any big pieces.
Compost dirt layer
We then added a middle layer of sawdust. We used it as a filler to save on how much dirt we’d have to put in the buckets, but it will also act as a moisture retainer.
Saw dust layer
Since I thought that you might be tired of looking at dirt layers, I thought I toss in a cute picture of Riley
My cutie!
While doing all the layering, Riley looked for earthworms in the bucket and found a few.
Riley holding earthworm
Following the saw dust layer, we added a 2nd layer of compost dirt and then topped that with a 2nd layer of worm dirt.
Riley patting down the last layer of worm dirt
Then in the top of the bucket we planted some green beans
green beans
We ended up planting 2 green beans in the tops of both buckets.
green beans in the top of the bucket
These are the types of tomatoes and green beans we planted
tomato & green bean tags
Here is a photo of the bucket all planted. I know it’s hard to see the tomatoes and green beans from all the grass in the background! But, I promise, they’re there!
Friday, we met Marty in town for lunch to celebrate Colt’s 17th birthday. As it turned out, Marty got off work at lunchtime. We ate Pizza for lunch and then ran a few errands and hit a couple of garage sales, where I was lucky enough to find a good selection of books. I got 2 antique math books ($2 for both) and a 1st edition copy of “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm” ($1), plus several other newer books that could be used for homeschool and just quality books for the boys to read ($6). After that we went home and hung around a while before going into town to Walmart where Colt picked out what he wanted and Riley got Colt a surprise birthday present. We ate at Whataburger for dinner, Marty and Colt’s choice to further celebrate their birthdays. When we got home, Colt had his cake and presents:
Colt's cake and presents
Colt got an external DVD drive/recorder from Marty and I to use with is notepad laptop. Riley’s present to him is in the decorated bag and it was 2 water guns.
Colt blowing out the candles
After eating cake we sat down to a double feature of “Arsenic and Old Lace” and “The Inn of the Sixth Happiness“. “Arsenic and Old Lace” had the fellas rolling on the floor in laughter. With “The Inn of the Sixth Happiness”, I snuck in a little homeschool. It’s based on the true story of missionary to China, Gladys Aylward. After the movies we all went to bed and listened to a thunder storm roll across our area.
Saturday morning, we met our friends Billy & Sissy at Birds of a Feather in Whitney for breakfast. As we were leaving we stopped on the bridge to take a look at our seasonal creek. It is usually dry, except during the rainy season. It was full and over flowing!
Our seasonal, but usually dry creek
We had a nice visit with Billy & Sissy and then stopped at a few garage sales. Then we came home and worked on our hanging tomato buckets (I’ll be doing a post about it tomorrow). We also did a MUCH needed cleaning of the refrigerator. It looked SOOOO much better, but a tad empty when we were done!
Nice and clean!
The refrigerator door. I can't believe we have 4 opened peanut butter jars!!
We did a few other things around the house and then went out to eat for Marty’s birthday. We ate at our favorite Mexican place,Three Amigos in Whitney. Then we came home and tinkered around the house until bedtime. We went to bed early so we could get up in time for church.
Sunday morning we woke up too late for church. For some reason the alarm on my phone didn’t go off. So we went ahead and slept in a bit longer. I got up and made my menu for the week and then ran to Wal-Mart for groceries while Marty and the boys stayed around the house playing the Wii. When I got home Marty and Colt helped me unload the Suburban and I put all the groceries up in my nice clean refrigerator. I tinkered around on the computer working and finishing up my new recipe blog. You can find it at: http://homesteadmomma.com/recipes/. Let me know what you think! After lunch we vegged in front of the TV and watched a bunch of Mythbuster episodes via Netflix. Marty had a hard week at work and decided that we would stay home from the evening service at church. Then we ate dinner, I fixed fish cakes and mashed potatoes. The guys all loved them, I guess I’ll have to make more next time. Then we watched more Mythbusters and went to bed.
Well that was the summary of our weekend! Today we’re back to the normal schedule of homeschool, housework and fixing meals!
This was a really simple recipe and it’s really pretty versatile. You can use tuna or salmon and even other shredded meats such as chicken, turkey and even beef, although I’d change around the seasonings. My fellas really like it, so it was a big hit with them. These are really yummy served on top of mashed potatoes and topped with ketchup.
Fish Cakes
4 cans tuna or 2 (14.75 oz.) cans salmon, drained and flaked
1/2 cup Italian bread crumbs
1/2 of a large onion, diced finely
2 tbsp. flour
2 eggs
1/2 tbsp. garlic powder
1 tbsp. dill seed
1/2 tsp. celery seed
salt & pepper to taste
1 cup coconut oil (or vegetable oil)
Mix together the fish, bread crumbs, onion, flour, eggs, and seasonings. Shape into 8 patties. In a large skillet, heat coconut oil over medium-high heat. Cook the patties until browned on both sides, about 4 minutes per side. Drain on paper towels before serving.
These are great on top of mashed potatoes and covered in ketchup.
Marty, Riley and I worked on this project together.
