Pioneer Woman at Heart

  Organic lemon balm sprouting up in an indoor pot, for the first time ever.  I have not planted it indoors before, nor brought in a plant or portion of a plant.  It's being started from organic seeds. I brought in some chives and rosemary.  We'll see if I can master the ability to keep them both alive indoors this winter. Sage and Thyme from the herb garden (brought in before our first hard freeze):  dehydrated the thyme, but next year I think it would be useful to make a thyme tincture (for any medicinal reasons).  Do you make a thyme tincture?  If so, what do you keep it on hand to treat?  It totally slipped my mind this year. I dehydrated most of the sage, but used some fresh to start a tincture (this is great for sore throats when you don't want to/or can't make hot tea).  Just my experience with a sage tincture.  If you have other uses, please share.   I ground some ( a first for us ) of the sage and filled a re-purposed ...

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 am almost done weeding all of the flower beds.  I have yet to weed the herb garden, but it's in pretty good shape thankfully. We came up with a solution to "fence" the other vegetable garden on a budget.  We are seeking out a person to come till the vegetable gardens on a budget.  It seems that the only one we can find so far, is with a large tractor (so glad we removed two sides of the fenced garden).   We had a coyote in the gardens lately.  We are also hoping it has moved on. The new coop build is on hold (sigh), but there is nothing I can do about it. When you run a homestead, you run into set backs here and there.   Our AC units are not in yet, and we are in the 80's.  Again, another job on hold (for now).   I've started harvesting chive blossoms (more on that later). I managed to gather yarn scraps to crochet the latest book blanket granny square, but have yet to crochet it.  Progress. I was asked if I had anymore croch...

I harvested a handful of green onions and chives before the very cold weather moved in (more so than before).  The chickens are not happy.  I'm not happy, but trying to find the joy in the days either way. My kitchen has been in full force the last few days.  My goodness, I have never felt overwhelmed with baking and cooking, but it has taken over in whirlwind lately.  These photos were not even everything that was getting baked/cooked or mixed up. Despite the need to get meals made around here, I managed to squeeze in a trip to the library book sale.  I only brought home three books, but snagged some free magazines too.   I used to read magazines when Mom was with us.  She'd pass her magazines onto me to read.  When she passed, I no longer read magazines.  I never thought to borrow some from our library.   In light of garden season moving in slowly (thanks to this colder weather), we've been enjoying our empty nest life. ...

Just when I thought I was in shape, I was not.  The very first day outside weeding reminded me of that, ha ha!  Boy, oh boy, you do get a work out outside.   Did anyone else venture out this month to start the garden process, clean up beds and such?  Did you slide out of bed, like a sloth the next morning, and drag yourself to the ever needed delightful coffee you preset to brew the night before? Only to find out you have more muscles than you thought?  And can barely walk, let alone lift your arms? Note:  The above was drafted up prior to my foot fracture ha ha!   The arrival of April has pushed all of our "projects" (indoor anyway) on the back burner for now.  It's that time of year to till the garden ( done ), start weeding and mulching flower beds and the herb garden ( in the works ), and planting the garden.   Our homegrown asapargus is starting to come up!  I have my husband on picking duty for now.  Yum!  No as...

Spring herbs are here! Store bought chives are expensive. The cost for the above bottle of dried chives was $4.58!  I freeze my chives, but for the dry Ranch mix recipe, I need dehydrated/dried chives.  The bottle above is .12 oz and when ground makes 7 1/2 teaspoons.   It is horribly expensive, and I have managed to kill the indoor chive plant I brought inside. So....on a mission I went...   I dehydrated chives many years ago, but did not do my research before hand.  I had snipped them, and placed them on parchment paper in the dehydrator, and they the fan blew them all over the inside. Here is what I have researched.   -if you wash your chives, be sure to let they dry or dry them with a towel, or use a vegetable drying pad to let them dry off any water from washing them.  Otherwise, your dehydrator time will be a lot longer. -do not snip them, keep the the chives whole, and place in the dehydrator. -do not use a heat higher than 95°F, and d...

Chives are in full bloom. Sage is about to bloom. Comfrey bloom for the first time ever. Now we are battling the lack of rain.  The ground is almost rock hard due to the temperature getting up to 91°F.

Here is the recipe I promised to share.  The original recipe is linked, and below I will explain what I added. I found the "protein packed" breakfast recipe online at Lentils.org  (click Lentils.org to the left to go directly to the recipe), and changed it up a bit to try. Lentils for breakfast?  I mean why not, I add black beans them too.  Lentils are high in protein and low in fat, and provide many nutrients as well as fiber. First I made my lentils the day before, and that way I had that job done.  You need cooked lentils to make this frittata. I still have homegrown sweet potatoes (they lasted much better than all the other potatoes too).