Pioneer Woman at Heart

I have finally sorted the odd assortment of Christmas items from last month's purge, and yes some went into the trash.   If you need permission, ditch the doubt and toss it out!   The rest donated.  Job complete. ✔   What else can one do when it's -15°F (again), and there isn't even "wind" outside.  It's cold here.  More snow is in the forecast.   One new recipe that also went into the trash - a millet bar recipe.  I thought it would be "fun" to buy some organic puffed millet and make a really easy recipe, but it tasted horrible.  The small amount of puffed millet cost me $1.33.  A recipe I will keep!  Oh my goodness it was so good.  By the way, it was a recipe I had, and wanted to try to the last two years.  Literally.  I don't think I have ever roasted acorn squash, because it was always one squash that never grew to size here (have no idea why as we can grow all other squash). My husband kept telling...

  Garden clean up is very late this year, due to circumstances beyond our control.  Now we are delayed with rain, but we may have a few warmer days this week.  We may only have two days left to finish the removal. In hindsight, we should have hired help, but..... The sunshine kabocha produced a few, although most do not look completely ripe (by color), and the butternut is pretty small.  The cocozelle zucchini we left on the vines is the perfect size for seed saving. Although most of the mashed potato squash was cross pollinated, we got a few that produced to enjoy.  We literally got zero spaghetti squash (which is very very rare, but we did have a bad drought year).  The Mashed potato squash is the white one in the above photo. Russian red kale and a mix of Swiss chard were washed, sliced, blanched and frozen for winter use.  The bugs got to most of the Swiss chard. Green onions were dehydrated for the first time ever.  I froze some as well, but...

  One more "first" for me this year (something new to try/experience). . .  Cranapple Butter ( A Ball Canning Recipe).  I read this is good to top your turkey at the holidays, but we plan to try it on toast too.  Why did I try it?  Well, we had more apples from our trees.  Yes, I could can apple pie filling, but it may still happen too.

  The early morning weather here has been downright chilly.  One morning it was 42 degrees.  Flower beds have been weeded.  The herb garden is next in line, but I do need to figure out what to do with all the rosemary plants I planted in the actual vegetable garden.  I have not mastered keeping them alive all winter indoors.  They will not survive the winter if left outside. Did any of my blog writing followers locate a better "blog" platform online?  Just curious if anyone is moving from blogger. 

  I went out to pick a spaghetti squash for this week, and ended up bringing in 3 of them, and look what I found!  I do have acorn squash on the vines.  They were just hidden.  I saw that one apple tree was completely gone (except one), so I brought in a few from the other tree and sliced it for a taste.  Delicious, and ready to pick. Our homemade apple picker, ha ha!  I think it's time to buy some real tools for this job.  We planted the two apple trees in May of 2012. We planted granny apple trees later, but they did not make it.  I guess we never thought to replant.  Maybe next spring.  I have not weighed the apples yet. 

...and it's only Tuesday. Hubby and I made it to the g ym at 5 am this morning .  Slowly, but surely, we'll have a regular routine in place.  I myself, had been up sin ce 2am.   The usual stuff needs done, and I'm still trying to get some foods stocked up and processed etc.  It's a fight this week. I canned 8 more pints of applesauce.   My swiss chard is not looking too good.  I plan on visiting it today and getting the last of it in the f ree zer.

We lack orchards that do no t spray in our area.  The only way I'll get organic apples, is to wait for my trees to produce or buy gala organic apples from the grocer (and hope they are really organic). I've been happy with the taste of my homemade applesauce, using gala, even though other types are suggested more often.

The temperature here dropped to the 20's last night, so I made soup to warm us all up.  I admit, I had my doubts that the kids would eat this soup, and I was pretty sure a few would refuse to even taste it. I've been experimenting this week with sweet potatoes.  They were on sale, so I stocked up on some.  This recipe comes from Allrecipes , and contains sweet potatoes, carrots, an onion and an apple.  It also contains freshly grated ginger and red lentils too.