Pioneer Woman at Heart

  Any writers here?  Are there any free downloadable programs that are similar to what Word offers?  Other than Google docs and notepad?  Looking for one like Word, in which to use for writing, with options to save to a removeable drive as well as save to the computer.  Font options, italics, underscore, paragraph widths and all the options that Word has. Or an inexpensive program to purchase similar to Word? Our Word program expired a few years ago, and I do not like notepad at all.  It comes in handy for a recipe, but that's about it. Thanks to anyone who can give me recommendations.  I think I follow a few that write books, and possibly a few that keep journals (not blogs, but actual personal journals) using their computer/laptap or tablet.   This tip may be a repeat tip.  Sorry if that is the case.  I started buying 2# bottles of Dawn on sale, and use them to refill our smaller bottle.  Saves us a lot of money, as we can, p...

(although foggy, rain has stayed away for a few days here) The garden hoses have been pulled out of storage.  It's a task for sure.  We require about 200 feet or so of garden hose to water our garden. Our very first garden was pretty small.  Our farmhouse had zero water spigots outside.  None. We hauled water cans, and buckets in a wheeled cart to water it, and the garden flourished. We have also unpacked the garden tool bags I take out to the garden, watering cans, solar chargeable motion sensor do-hickies that send out a high pitched noise to deter the squirrels etc.  The first year we put them out, we never saw one squirrel until we took them out for the season.  Some stopped working, but most are still solar charging.    The gardens are tilled now, and one garden area fence is back in place.  Fencing has been acquired for the other garden (although it will not keep deer from jumping).  We have successfully planted all of the tomato p...

Organic Daikon Radishes (a superfood, powerhouse of goodness) are sold in bundles of either 2-3 in our grocery stores, and each one can be up to 15 inches long.  I only need about a 1/2 cup of the radish, when I make kimchi for ourselves. It got me thinking. I could freeze the rest for meals, or I could dehydrate the extra. I used my handheld spiralizer and spiralized the extra daikon radishes.  I then placed those into they dehydrator (you get a lot, but it will dry up to almost nothing). I will store the dehydrated daikon radishes until the next time I want to make kimchi, and simply break up the dehydrated radishes, and re-hydrate them.   Easy, makes the most of our purchase with buying daikon radishes, and we don't have to eat it for days fresh.  However, I did find a recipe that uses daikon radish, that I do want to eventually try.   By the way, diced daikon radish goes well in soups and stews (and can be swapped for potatoes in soups). I also wan...

We tried a new white bean salad, using fresh herb garden parsley and rosemary from my herb garden.  The recipe is a winner for several reasons.  One, it is a small salad, so it's perfect for two people, and perfect for summer fresh herbs.  Two, for the small amount of ingredients, it packs a good flavor.  A few reviews stated to add some diced celery.  I may do that next time.  A keeper recipe. Recipe is White Bean Salad ( online ). You can read the recipe, but to print it, the site requires you to sign up to "unlock" the print option. It's easy enough to simply write it on a recipe card. Second bean salad to try using different beans. . . Bean Salad I got this recipe from my Dad years ago (he was into super foods and bought many recipe books pertaining to that focus).  I found it while cleaning out old recipe books and such in my kitchen.  I forgot all about it.  I doubt my Dad ever made this salad, but anyway..... The salad requires a fres...

  I finished the granny square to go with this finished book, for my book blanket.  Gold color is the most difficult to match up with yarn, but so far, the granny squares are looking pretty colorful.                         I'm still using the homemade nail oil, but after planting flowers, dropping mulch, and weeding flower beds (and other outdoor work before the rain poured for days), my nails are peeling, cut down to the quick, and look terrible.  I'll keep using it and update later.  Homesteading work at it's best ha ha! Local area produce haul.  The rhubarb and strawberries are local, and the tomatoes are from TN (too early for them here). We dug up your rhubarb plants last fall, so they are in grow bags and pretty small harvest this spring.  They'll get a new home in the ground hopefully soon. This and That   ©  May 2025 by  Kristina  at  Pioneer  Woman at Heart

  There is nothing better than to enjoy some crock pot Italian Soup during a cold spritz in May.  It was a new recipe  ( Food.com ), but I utilized some tomato sauce I canned last year, and dried herbs from the herb garden.  Not sure what they meant by "brown" onion, but I used a yellow onion, and used fresh minced garlic (not from a jar).  I also used sweet Italian vs. mild sausage (what was in the freezer), and it turned out delicious! I'm taking advantage of these cooler weather days, and getting dehydrated items re-stocked. I'm dehydrating ginger for tea making and other uses.  I can also grind it as needed.  I do freeze some as well, which has come in handy several times for homemade ginger-ale and other meals and recipes. Has anyone, who uses a dehydrator, dehydrated turmeric root?  I just froze us a bunch, but would like to dry some.  How do you dehydrate it without staining your trays?  Will it stain stainless steel if I layer it...

We can't seem to get a break from the rain right now.  I checked on the garden.  It's flooded.  Like parts of it have 4 inches of standing water.  Woke up to a chilly 36°F outside.  So cold, I had to turn a heater on, and today I need to order propane (gulp!).  Way too cold for a garden to grow, so I am praying my already planted herbs and flowers survive this dip in temperature.  Wet and cold do not mix well for an abundant garden.  My feverfew seeds did not sprout at all, so I may need to re-buy them if we want a harvest this year. I have been bringing in about 2-3 asparagus a day lately.  We are at the end of harvest, but we keep getting a few a day. I'm already utilizing fresh herbs from the garden.  The cilantro seed sprouts are holding up in this colder weather too.  Same with the dill seeds I planted. About turnips . . . Turnips are the most under-rated cruciferous vegetable in my opinion.  Probably along the same path ...

  We have not had a day without rain.  It rained all day yesterday, and all night and it's raining this morning.  In fact, I went out to pick asparagus yesterday when I saw we got a slight break, but the rain poured down as I walked to the asparagus patch.  Three stalks of asparagus got picked anyway. The garden tilling was not done as we were planning yesterday.  May is finicky, so I'm not going to guess.  I'll just keep making back up plans and get other "stuff" done around here.   I have enjoyed the little bit of porch time (most days have been on the chilly side), sitting and listening to the rain.  The flowers are enjoying the rain too, as well as the herb garden.  I'm just glad we have not planted the vegetable garden yet, although seeds would have been a blessing to have gotten in before this rain.  The evenings are still in the low 40's, and too cold for tomato plants or other vegetable plants. Right now, it's just a saturat...

Just when I thought I would have zero blog content to post, my brain zero's in on something new to me.  Dehydrating chive blossoms is not new to me.  However, using them in a new way is new to us. Of course, you will need a somewhat larger patch of chives in your herb garden to be able to do this.  We allowed our chives to go to seed for several years.  Did you know that one chive blossom can contain up to 120 or so seeds?   Each of the tiny flowers in the chive blossoms can contain about 1-3 seeds each.   I have used fresh chive tops to infuse into oil in the past (leave chive tops to dry before infusing), but I have not made infused vinegar or used them for other dishes (have added them to baked egg breakfast dishes). Most salad dressings we make here, use red wine vinegar, and most recipes to infuse the chive blossoms into vinegar, call for white wine vinegar.   A new "first" time for us - I am making us an infused white wine vinegar. I w...

  I had another long weekend, but productive.  My husband worked again (2 long 12 hour shifts), so I decided to tackle another big job while I could.  In reality, it was because we got more rain, and it's been raining every single day lately, so garden work was not happening anyway. I emptied the entire standing cupboard that holds my canning pot, freezer containers (as they empty), extra canning jars, and all things homesteading that don't have place anywhere else. A shelf had collapsed (it's the cheap wood type put-together-yourself type cabinet, but it works for now).   I purged the entire thing, cleaned it, then moved it from the wall and cleaned behind it and under it, moved it back, re-organized it and prayed it will hold together a few more years. I filled a box with items to take to the thrift store. We have had some cooler weather lately.  Woke up to 42°F this morning. Brrr!  Some evenings are below 50 degrees.  There is rain in the forec...

  New Sweet Tasty Treat!  New Recipe Tried. Pomegranate-Vanilla Cashews. These would be great for simply gifting at Christmas, to take and add to your charcuterie board, a side to go with a cheese appetizer, etc.  They are addicting, so be careful, ha ha!  They would be tasty as an ice cream topper too, if you do a sundae bar for a gathering or for own ice cream treat. 3 cups of raw (unroasted, unsalted) cashews came out to about 1 pound (16 ounces) of cashews.   One note:  I think I would use a slotted spoon to spoon it all out onto the parchment paper, vs. dump the entire mix onto it. Here is why. Where the extra coating puddled, the cashews stuck a lot more to the parchment, and although they are also still on the crunchy side, I felt the pieces that sat and baked in the extra coating came out more soft and sticky.  To get all the pieces nicely crunchy, and come off the parchment much easier, I think eliminating the extra liquid would help....