Pioneer Woman at Heart

  At 7am yesterday, we were at an air quality of 174.  If you see the chart below, that put us in the "red" zone (unhealthy).  Very close to the "very unhealthy" level on the chart.  So there was no outdoor work at all.  Areas within in hour from us were in the 300's - hazardous, stay indoors at all times. We've been praying for good winds to change direction and give us a break.  I was miserable all day, and the numbers reached to 204 (purple level) according to our local health department.  I had to run to the store, and the library ( needed their fax service). Speaking of library.  I walked into our little library for the first time since Feb. of 2020.  It's been that long since I've been to our library. This morning we did a complete turn with the air quality.  When I look outside, I do not see any haze at all, and the air quality number is a healthy low of 28.  However, today there will be more rain.  I am not sure how muc...

  We are once again getting unhealthy air quality reports.  I wanted to be out weeding the herb garden, but could not.  The air was that thick with smoke haze from the Canadian fires. It's this bad again today, maybe even worse.  My husband told me to stay indoors again, no matter the condition of the garden (s).  Late last night, when the chickens were put in for the night, the air smelled like a fireplace. I'm dealing with a dry sore throat, burning eyes, and partial laryngitis.  Everyone I talk to is experiencing the same or worse.  Never in our lives, have we ever lived through something like this. I finally found a recipe for Einkorn pancakes that makes a smaller batch.  Recipe is from Jovial online.  I thawed some frozen blueberries and swapped sugar (only 2 Tbsp) for coconut sugar and they were delicious.  It's a keeper, and a great way to add those blueberries in the day.    It's been a long time since I've made Einkorn...

There is nothing to harvest in the garden, but the rain is speeding that process up for us.  I know that I will be very busy out there when it dries up ha ha!  However, the rainy days are speeding up my indoor progress.   Sorry if these cleaning/purging posts are boring.  It was a long time coming.  The big purge/clean.  This is a long post, so you may want to grab a cup of coffee, ha ha!   My indoor purge/clean up is moving along.  I checked off another area off my clean it list, so that leaves two more areas.   I will need the assistance of my husband for the last two, as it involves putting some tools and fix-it items away.  The garage will get a complete do-over this year.  It's just not on the "do it now" list. Anyway, at one point in my early life, I was really into freelance writing.  I had articles published and kept articles in files.  I still had poems I wrote at a kid growing up.  I tossed th...

  Thankfully my husband got the AC back up and running.  Whew!  We will have to replace it next year for sure.   It's been raining, hot and humid here the last few days.  We are thankful for the rain, but could do less with the tornado warnings or watch alerts. I took a quick look at the garden, and I will definitely need to tie up tomato plants on the next dry day.  Everything is looking good however, other than the popcorn and spring planted garlic.  Some of my newly planted Gladys in the flower bed are now coming up too.  I'll definitely be busy weeding and tilling on the next dry day. The upstairs AC was installed, and we are pricing new units for next year (don't want to end up without AC again).   I brought down two trash bags full of stuff left from one daughter, and there is more to bring down.  I'm starting on the flooring in that room this week ( or next week ). A dozen crocheted hats were spilling over on a bookshelf...

  Success!  If you were reading my blog, do you remember my new list of 7 areas (these are all in plain sight) to clean up/purge/ put things back in their homes?  All of our set backs were making me depressed, so I dove full speed ahead into my list. I have now checked off 4 of those 7 areas, and it has been heaven to wake up and start my day.   I would otherwise get side tracked, or be outside.  Anyway, my kitchen is back to neat and clean, and tidy.  I filled the truck with more donations (can't believe I found more stuff). I even washed the tablecloth! I have gifted these a few times, and they were well received.  They are sturdy, and hold notepads, you can buy at Wal-mart or the Dollar Tree.  I glue a magnet to a pen, so the pen stays on the fridge too.  I will not glue magnets to the pens until I gift these (so the pen does not dry out).  You can get the full instructions:  HERE (on my S.C.R.A.P. Blogspot). In the process...

  We have been getting rain, so I'm not doing any garden work currently.  I weeded out the larger weeds in the rose bed, but the rest will have to wait until the the rain stops. I have been successful with my new to-do list (the 7 areas to tidy up).  I have now crossed 2 off of my list of 7.  My husband hasn't noticed. Speaking of my husband, there is no sign of the long work hours ending.  He promised me a "date" night, which was taking the motorcycle out and dinner out.  Didn't happen.  They held him over at work.  We are all tired of it.  He has been forced over every night.  One night he was to be home by 8pm, and ended up home at 9pm. I'm considering going back to work.  We never see each other, and there is no sign we will be getting our projects finished. I still have a list for us when these hours stop, but I not able to vision any of it being accomplished.  I'm still upset half of the garden was not planted.  Noth...

  No part of the bell pepper was wasted either.  The parts that I could not make a ring out of, were sliced for snacking, and the seeds went to the chickens. Why have I not made eggs in a nest this way until now??   By the way, one was not enough, ha ha!  I made each of us two. I love cooking recipes with bell peppers.  These are delicious!  I cannot wait for the fresh garden goodies to make these all summer.   I will have to tweak the chicken "sausage" patties however.  I just picked a random recipe online.  It was on the dry side, with little to no flavor.  I prefer the turkey ones over these. Do you have a good chicken breakfast sausage recipe?  I feel you almost have to add a bit of pork sausage to it.  When I make turkey patties, they are more flavorful.  I may go check my recipe and see if the ingredients to flavor them are different. I know I put sage in these, but like I said, just no flavor.  Health...

  I know the instructions on this recipe are on my blog somewhere, but my searching came up empty.  Any way, I bought these organic beets at the store, but they are not the same as homegrown. Nothing is.  Homegrown is the best.   I didn't measure.  Dice trimmed and peeled beets, dice onion, and put on a oil sprayed piece of heavy duty foil (or toss in olive oil then place on foil).  Sprinkle with thyme and sprigs of fresh rosemary from the herb garden.  Wrap foil and pinch to seal it.  I place my foil packets on a baking sheet. 400°F, 60 minutes or until beets are tender.  Enjoy!  We have made these on the grill too. Roasted turkey with homemade garlic aioli sauce, and those delicious beets/onions. Here's to praying we get the new raised beds built in time to fall plant beets.  I am really gonna miss my spring planted beets this year.  

  I'm cleaning up my blog, and making a few changes.  It was time to lighten the look and make things more simple.  I got rid of the side bars and that bold flower background.  I hope it is a bit more pleasing to the eyes. The vegetable garden weeding continues, but it's not as bad as the previous years.  The squash plants are looking great, and the cucumbers are too.  I did notice that our National Pickling Cucumbers are much larger plants than our Marketmore 76 plants.  The green beans are looking good, other than a few were trampled early in the season.  No, the fence is not up yet. I've been pretty successful with rotating the vegetable garden weeding and up keep, with the flower beds.  I started on the rose bed finally, and boy it is a mess.  We have tried everything but roof shingles to keep the weeds out.  I may get my husband to try that this year after all these trials.   We have tried everything from mulch, to bl...

  It was high time to make homemade spearmint iced tea.  I love this stuff!  My Mom hated it, but her Mom (Grandma), used to make it.  Love, love, love it on a hot day.  It's nice to have when I come in from the garden.  Now that my husband is doing all the mowing after work, he too enjoys this delicious tea.  I use organic green tea bags. My popcorn is not doing that great this year.  I may have planted it too late.  I hope I did not waste garden space with a fail crop.   Here is what's going on in some of the flower beds. The two "red" ones are actually two different colors.  The last one is more of a burgundy.   My lavender is in full bloom too.  I brought some in to enjoy.

  The weekend went fast.  Thursday night tornados hit northeast of us.  One daughter's family and several friends were in it's path.  All are okay, but there was a lot of damage done. I am joining Sandra at Diary of a Stay a Home Mom. The weather . . . Mostly 80's for high's this week, with possible rain this weekend. As I look outside my window . . . It's cloudy. Right now I am . . . Drinking coffee. Thinking and pondering . . . Canning this season.  It's been on my mind.  What is the most favorite condiment you like to can for gifting?   Not sure it'll happen, but thinking about it. Did I mention our handy-man quit on us?  He won't even come tend the hens anymore either.  We even have unfinished work from him, and have no idea what's going on.   I have chicken people to contact, but we may be doing everything else, from here on out, ourselves now.  It means it could take longer with my husband working so many hours. I h...

My experimental Einkorn flour biscuits did not go to waste.  We enjoyed (or I should say my husband) them with some freshly canned, reduced sugar strawberry jam.  Very good!  I will keep working on this recipe, and make them larger for breakfast sandwiches (although we do prefer a homemade muffin).  Einkorn didn't work out for English muffins. They would deflate so easily when I would move them from the tray to skillet. During my internet searching, I've been looking at buying a new apron.  I do have a sewing machine, but the drive to sew one on my own is just not there. (source:  Amazon) I really like this style of the criss-cross back vs. ties.  Also, called Tessuti style.  I do like the two pockets too.  I see that some Etsy sellers have some online as well.  Just not sure on fabric/color.  Do any of you use aprons of this style?  Do you like them better than the ones that tie?  Does anyone here make and sell them? I ha...

  Feeling bad I am schlepping myself around with a stuffy nose, and cough, my husband ordered me to "rest."  Ha!  Well I am trying.  It's definitely not hard to do today.  We are getting more rain, which we greatly need, and it looks very stormy outside.  The kind of weather you want to curl up with a book, and light a candle. I'm living on ginger/lemon tea, doses of mullein tincture and what not.  I normally drink a nettle tea concoction for allergies, but did not get started on that early enough apparently.  The recent smoke haze in the air did not help either.  The air is much better now. I have been doing a ridiculous amount of internet surfing, working on a color scheme for the next blanket (to use up yarn in my stash).  I guess you can call it a stash.  It is really yarn that was leftover from other projects, which I over bought I believe.  Anyway, the one color scheme I really like, involves (gulp) buying ...

  Once again my Sunday was my "Monday" so the list on the to-do's around here are short.  One day off for my husband is not enough.  He is so tired on his day off, he doesn't have the energy to tackle anything around here.  I get it, so I don't complain. In lieu of possibly strong winds with rain yesterday, I was out early to till where needed, and tie up any tomato plants.  Just for kicks, and because I bought them, I planted Glady bulbs and a few others.  I had not planted them due to the drought we were having. I also dropped some tall zinnia seeds, white daisy seed, and a mixed pink daisy seed.  If they come up they come up, if not, we tried. We still need to install our second mole chasing windmill.  The rain should help get that job done, as we need to bury a grounding rod for it.  The rain will soften the ground for us. I did a quick inventory on my canned goods, and made notes on what needs canned in the way of condiments this ga...

  A few of you have mentioned that purging/organizing/tossing seems a bit overwhelming.  Well, this is how I do it. I put the boxes of "stuff" in the smack dab middle of the living room.  It's in plain sight, and that will bother me, so it's tackled and taken care of and more out of the house faster.  More put in their new homes, or re-organized.  I am cleaning as if I was moving, so I handle each item asking myself, "would I take you to a new home," which helps make decisions on keeping or donating much easier. I do have a ton of paperwork, that got taken out of a file cabinet 1 year ago (and 2 months to be precise).  The boxes were shoved into the office when the kitchen was boxed up to repair the flooring. I found my hand crank coffee grinder, and my apple peeler/corer.  I honestly never had a chance to use the peeler.  How many of you have a peeler/corer combo and use it?  Decisions are to be made here.  That fan was left upstairs by...

  I apologize in advance.  I printed this recipe from a blog I follow, but failed to write down which blog.  It was a while ago too.   You know me, I'm a sucker to try a new recipe. I gave the recipe a try, and here is how mine turned out. These baked pretty well, considering my baking powder was expired (gulp).  I haven't been doing much baking around here lately. These were delicious freshly baked, but next day very dense.  Good, but the white flour is not good on our meal plan.  So.... I played around with einkorn flour the other day.   Einkorn will not spike my husband's blood sugar levels. I see that Jovial has a drop biscuit recipe, but it calls for a full TBSP of baking powder (?) and maple syrup. If you make einkorn biscuits without any sugar, please tell me how you make yours and if I need to change anything. I prefer to use recipes directly from Jovial, but they only have two biscuit recipes on their site. Here is what I did: E...