Pioneer Woman at Heart

  I really miss the island life.  No service....just normal life, live music, the beach, waves, good friends, and peace of mind.  It was so hard to adjust when we got back home.  How hard? First, I was utterly frustrated to see that my kitchen was filled with processed foods.  Daughter K went on a shopping binge, and there was junk food and pop everywhere.  On the floor, on the fridge, counters and table.  That was even before I had check the front room.  I had a feeling she had a friend over while we were on vacation. Breakfast scramble was made - sweet potatoes, onions, green bell pepper, jalapeno, spices, eggs and bacon. Got the green and wax beans blanched and in the freezer. Here is a photo of the winter hats I worked on over the weekend (my travel project).  Although I am still not booked for any holiday craft show at this time, I am still doing handiwork when I can.  I try and set an hour or half hour for myself daily.  I hav...

We had a superb weekend on the island.  Our last sanity saver trip over this year.  Maybe. If they have an opening, I'm taking it.  We were literally off grid.  There is no service where we stay, and we like it that way. On the way home we stopped at a large produce stand and brought home some green and wax beans.  I will be stopping there every year we head to the island from now on.  They have a large variety of everything. Came home to find out one of my chickens died.   We literally unpacked the truck, threw everything on the bed and kitchen counters, ran out to pick a tomato, and headed to the "Big City" to check on Mom.  We took her some chocolates a woman makes on the island, one tomato (only one turning red that was a beefsteak type), and some popcorn she loves. Mom looks much better, but has a long way to go to recovery.  She still cannot drive herself anywhere, so between our Daughter K, her neighbor, my younger brother and I, ...

I decided to freeze the last of the picked tomatoes.  I didn't have enough to make or can anything, so they went into the freezer until the next harvest.   I canned another round of hot pepper jelly.  My mad hatter peppers are finally turning red. On a good note, I talked to my Mom about Life Alert, and I think she will be getting an Apple Watch that detects falls, and calls so many phone numbers when it happens. I'm just happy we have come up with a solution.  The cost is way less than Life Alert too.  In the meantime, her insurance is delivering her 14 free meals (great news)!

(before running it thru the sauce maker) I canned a batch of homemade taco sauce.  I picked fresh jalapenos for it, and boy are my hot peppers doing great in this heat.  It has zero corn starch and only 1/4 cup of sugar (no corn syrup) and only real food. 10 glorious jars of taco sauce done. Checked that off the list.  Hoping to get more tomatoes. Seed saving has begun.  I have bell pepper seeds drying and a bit of jalapeno seeds.  It's harder to save my hot pepper seeds, as I freeze and can with the seeds in, but will get them dried as well.  I have some Amish paste seeds drying as well.

The water hose was working overtime due to the heat and no rain. In fact, schools closed and will not be open until the 30th for now (due to the heat).   However, we woke up to thunderstorms.  Glorious rain is falling on the gardens this morning. My first batch of hot pepper jelly was done, but I will need to do more canning today with a small amount of tomatoes. Froze more bell peppers and jalapenos, and made egg salad for a cold meal. Mom was released from the hospital a few days ago, but since then has had a bad fall, which required stitches.  I'm very worried about her health right now.  She is a very stubborn person and we keep telling her to take her cell phone with her when she is outside.  She was even out shopping prior to the fall, which I need to get after her to use the scooter in the store from now on. First, we scolded her for being outside in 90 degree weather doing yard work at 8pm.  Second, I need to see what phone she has to get her a...

  Mondays I typically try and do the entire house, so I can enjoy it the rest of the week.   Didn't happen.  I started out making egg/sausage/cheese and chickpea tortilla quesadillas for breakfast (next time will add jalapenos), cooked up ground beef for sloppy joes and had a mountain of dishes after that. Dinner was crock pot sloppy joes on Ezekiel bread and sweet potato fries (baked). Laundry got started, but our mower guy arrived, so I couldn't put it on the clothesline.  I started on floors, but had to do other stuff too.  Just hard to keep up with.  I haven't even checked the garden yet. I got another corner area of the upstairs carpet shampooed, but when Daughter E moved out she left trash and belongings.  Good luck getting her to come and clean it up, so guess who is doing it?  Yep.  Me and my husband.  I am gonna have one big party when the last one moves out.  These kids, and I didn't raise them that way, are so selfis...

We were very productive over the weekend.  Got more taken out of the upstairs, weed whacking almost caught up, all flower beds but one weeded, herb garden weeded.  Picked up more totes and got more yarn and crafting supplies moved to the upstairs.  Started another box for donations, tore down more boxes, made a trip to recycling and more. It's been ridiculously hot here.  No rain in sight. Watering is happening, but only on certain parts of the garden now. Hubby finally looked at Daughter K's car.  The AC is not working.  Unfortunately, it needs more work than he thought. Speaking of working on her car.....weird things happened on Sunday.  While he was out working on the car, and I had just got out of the shower (after working in the herb garden), a woman literally (kid you not) walked out of the woods behind our property, walked up to the driveway and asked for water and use of a phone.  We were like "what is going on?"  She had some so...

I found a recipe I lost once, but lost it again before trying it.  Urgh.  All I can remember is that it contained tomatoes, was baked and had kelp powder in the recipe.  I swear I had it in a recipe book I had, but so far I have not found it (again).  Story of my life, ha ha!   I have gone through the pile of un-tried recipes, my scanned recipes, recipes in my document folder etc.  However, I believe I have figured out what cookbook the recipe was in.  Stay tuned.  Hope I am right. Brought in our first harvested bell pepper.  Golly, I love the smell of freshly sliced bell pepper.  I grew them from seed as well.  First one to go in the freezer. No rain here for a few days.  Hot and humid again. Mom is still in the hospital.  No changes since Wednesday.  She will be going home today if all goes okay. Daughter E left a lot of boxes, so I spent much time breaking them down for the garden and recycling.  Much of ...

  We have one pie pumpkin on all 4 plants.  Sheesh.  Bad garden year for everything this year, but tomatoes and hot peppers. Something funny to share.  When we went on our motorcycle ride we pulled into the front of our nearest Kroger. My husband hopped off and left the radio blaring and ran in for a few items.  I was standing there trying to figure out how to turn down the tunes, and an elderly lady walked out with a cart just sort of looking at me. I'm thinking, she is mad it's so loud. I didn't want to touch any buttons and later my husband walked out and realized he left it so loud.  He turned it down and the elderly lady in her vehicle now, drove up to us.  She said we reminded her of her husband and their times riding around on their bike.  She literally said, "we need more of that" pointing to the bike with the radio on, ha ha ha!   I love watching America's Test Kitchen in my crochet down time, but lately many of the recipes...

My husband brought home more yellow squash and zucchini.  So happy to get it, so  I'm blanching and freezing almost daily.  The hot peppers are rolling in daily too. I've been pretty good at keeping my cell phone charged and on me.  Mom's blood pressure dipped and when she couldn't get ahold of any of us kids, she went into panic mode.  I'm making sure she has all are cell numbers in case she has to call from her house phone.  Last time I called, she was feeling a bit better. (I drafted this post before the event at the end of this post happened) I had to order new shelves online.  The stores are pretty limited (again).  Daughter K could not even get them at her store.  I have more totes of yarn waiting to be moved upstairs. Not sure what's going on in your neck of the woods, but here it's back to restaurants going curbside.  Meanwhile this coming weekend the National Tractor Pulls is happening with thousands of people gathering from all...

  My hot peppers are rolling in like crazy.  I'm thankful for that. I canned some hot pepper mustard sauce with the hot banana peppers. I also made fresh salsa, and now have tomatoes on the table ready to can more stuff.  Feels strange to be canning again, but very thankful. My zucchini plants are dying, but thankful I picked up some free zucchini. Breakfast frittata with zucchini, leftover taco meat, jalapenos and cherry tomatoes from the garden. Got some jalapenos frozen as well.

  Chased this bugger off.  She was hanging out with the apple trees and berry bushes. We had busy weekend.  I worked more in the upstairs, cleaning carpets, and moving totes of yarn.  We attempted to dismantle a desk and move it to Daughter E's apartment, but it basically fell apart.  We do have another desk she can have.  We picked up a new jack for the camper, so that will get installed soon.  We checked more produce stands as well. We visited Mom and my husband installed a new dryer cover for her, then took a late birthday gift over to Daughter T. I'm so glad I am getting my yarn moved and into the upstairs.  I had so much shoved into our closet I can now better see what supply I have.  I had way more #10 thread than I thought. My closet will soon be much better organized and with space to walk in and out again.  Golly, it was so over due. Sunday evening we did a quick check on the garden and hauled in 7.14# of tomatoes and a lot of h...

During my last trip to the store (2nd attempt at another store), I bought the very last bottle of classic pectin.  However, I am still unable to find a vegetable brush for the camper (3 attempts).   As far as produce?  I have not found what I need other than I found a half dozen ears of corn to grill.   Although I have no photos to share today, I have a funny story to share. We went out with friends to our first cruise in.  It is where the town has all older cars drive up and down main street.  People park along the roads and sit and watch.  Well, we decided to eat out before that.   It's sort of funny, yet frustrating.  First we asked for silverware while we were ordering drinks.  Didn't get them.  I got my crowne royal served without the "rocks" so I fished them out of my ice water and added them.  We ordered 2 appetizers.  One arrived cold.  The other never arrived at all. We asked for silverware aga...

  Our weather continues to swelter us.  The storms continue, so weeding is not happening yet again today. The world has gone mad (again).  Daughter K was forced to once again don a face mask at work.   Daughter K's job involved loading and unloading heavy furniture in our 102°F heat index heat.    Although she found this very nice, rechargeable neck fan, she continues to struggle to breathe in the heat and of course out breath from her work.  Within a week however, she is sick.  Congested, runny nose, cough, etc.  It breaks my heart that this is happening again.  She does have the possibility to get a new job, but she plans to move in about 4-5 months too. I have no new updates on the garden today.  I'll be out to check it today though.   My husband's best friend's father's funeral was yesterday, and when we got home it was late and we were pretty tired. He's having issues with one eye contac and one eye, so I'm ...

Now that we are getting a load of rain, there has been no time to keep up with the weeds in the gardens.  They are full of ticks now, so repairing the weed whacker is on top of the to-do list.  I went out to check tomatoes and got attacked by ticks.  Literally.  I forgot to put my tick oil on.   Anyway, the tomatoes are just now starting to turn in color.  Nothing ready to harvest, but turning red anyway. (Hot peppers are so far doing the best) Green beans and zucchini are a joke this year.  I don't know if I planted too late or it's just this darn weather.  So frustrating.  The rain could change that, but.... The rabbits tore my greens to shreds, so fencing is the only way if I plant next year.  I have no idea if the potatoes have made it, due to the massive weeds in that bed as well. Well shoot, I thought the year started great this year, but now I need to find zucchini and green beans to stock up.  Sheesh. Also, I planted 6 ...

I ran out of time in the kitchen, so I finally finished up with what I brought home from the grocery store. Put a head of cauliflower in the freezer,  ...as well as some broccoli (all organic of course). Froze a bit of diced celery as well, and.... Last year I hosted an online pampered chef party to help out a friend.  I got these for free.  The rubber white tubing is used to shell the garlic clove (works great), and the other slices it.  These made my life so much easier when making garlic powder.  Note:  I didn't know until I had the party, but all of their stuff is made in China, so you may want to check for USA products online.  Anyway, it was so much easier filling a 9 tray dehydrator of sliced garlic. ...filled the dehydrator with garlic to grind into garlic powder. I boiled more eggs for egg salad.  It's a great meal for our very hot days here.  My husband works outside and next to very hot equipment and doesn't want to eat "hot" food ...

I put more stuff by the road and it was all gone by evening.  I'm so glad that someone can use it or scrap it, and it's out of the garage. We hit a whopping heat index of 102°F yesterday.  Hot and very very humid.   Prices are soaring.  Daughter K bought a 2 1/2 oz. bag of cotton candy last week at the fair and it cost her $7.00!!  Outrageous. I made a trip to the "Big City" and restocked groceries and other items.  We ran out of trash bags while cleaning the garage last weekend. I froze 2 bunches of organic asparagus, 2 bunches or organic dandelion greens, and a few organic red bell peppers.  These are not items I have from my garden, so I am stocking up when I see them available.   Thunderstorms continued through out the evening and may continue into today.  They say we'll have higher temperatures tomorrow.  It will either make or break the garden this year.  

  The first thing I needed to do was bake a breakfast for us. I used the teeny tomatoes from the garden, asparagus and fresh basil for this one.  Oh, and sausage on the bottom layer. Next?  I put up shelves upstairs and started the process of moving totes of yarn and getting that organized.  It may be a week long job (or more due to carpet cleaning, which we do plan to replace when the last kid is out), but so excited to get started. . . . meanwhile, in the garden. We finally got some glorious rain, so I sure hope it gives the garden what it needs to give us a bounty this summer. My husband, Daughter K and myself went to the last day of the fair to watch the demolition derby.  We had 4 family/friends in the derby this year.  The best part is we bought pit passes and drove the truck right into the arena area and sat on the tool box to watch.  We didn't have to sit in the crowded stadium.  It was great.  My husband's Godson won 1st place and $6...

Our morning yesterday started out with watering everything.  However, we may see rain today or later this week thankfully. We can mark one big job off the "to-do" list now.  The garage is cleaned up, aside from a few totes the kids left (have to wash stuff up and donate).  There are several bags of trash to go out to the curb, but I would say 98% is done.   Everything we put by the curb for free is gone except our old computer chair. We are asking family and friends if they need softball, t-ball or baseball items.  If they do not, it will be donated to our school. Any tote that was emptied was saved, considering store have about zero on their shelves right now. A photo of our trip to Wal-mart over the weekend.  I needed a few for yarn, and well, I didn't get any the size I needed.  We even went to a bigger city. My next "big" cleaning job is to clean out the refrigerator.  It's a battle with a daughter living here for sure.  I'm not used...