Pioneer Woman at Heart

  The photo is my husband's breakfast packed up the day prior.  I have to say, it would be absolutely fantastic with eggs over easy made fresh, but I do have to send breakfast on-the-go for him during the work week days. Oh my goodness, it was delicious!  Time consuming to make, but healthy and very good.  It's a keeper recipe, with some tips to make it easier. First, remember I ground up some of our dehydrated sage a while back?  I put it in a spice jar for easy use for making homemade chicken or turkey sausage?  Well, I'm not doing that anymore. I discovered that the delicious sage flavor goes stale after weeks of sitting in a spice jar.  It's just not the same as crushing the full leaves dehydrated.  I'll just have to take the time to crush them for really good flavor.   Tips:  Most butternut squash is about 3 pounds or so.  Unless I grow it myself, and have a dry year, I have never seen a "small" or 1 1/2 pound butternut sq...

  I have not baked an angel food cake in a few years.  There were just not enough eggs.  However, with my foot fracture, the eggs multiplied here at the homestead.  I decided to bake us one, and it is delicous!  I also now have a recipe for a frosting for the future (family recipe).  We are enjoying this one as it is, but a drizzle of fruit or whipped cream will be nice too. On a side note, I checked my blog, and I last baked one in 2022, and guess what?  It was raining, ha ha!  Well, it wasn't raining yesterday, but it is today. I saved all of the yolks, as I was already making us a breakfast scramble, and added them to the scramble. You can save the yolks for pretty much anything. I used another dozen eggs for the breakfast. From the freezer - garden green bell pepper, diced ham from the last holiday, and I thawed some dandelion greens and added those too. In the end, I tossed in some chives from the herb garden, and some tomatoes. I saved the e...

Today I am sharing how I made these delicious breakfast "bowls" by starting with sweet potatoes. The first time I made these, I used organic hannah sweet potatoes, and this second time I used locally grown sweet potatoes (which both were very good). Prepare fresh spinach, by cleaning it, and then slicing it.  Set aside.  I used two bundles of fresh spinach.  Set aside Prepare homemade cilantro-lime sauce. In a food processer, mix 2 full cups of cleaned organic (or home grown) cilantro and: -1/2 cup organic plain Greek yogurt (I have yet to use homemade for this), plus more to thicken to your taste -juice from one lime (not the bottled kind) -1 small can of organic salsa verde (or homemade), or about 14 Tbsp.  (cut the recipe in half to reduce the amount, but we really like the sauce on this breakfast dish) -2 cloves of garlic, minced -about 1/4 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp pepper Process until smooth, and like I mentioned above, add extra yogurt to make your sauce as thick ...

  It is tough getting the day started this week.  The cooler weather, just screams "sit, sip and enjoy the morning while you can" and then I delay the day ha ha ha!  It's worth it, as we are heating up now to the 80's again.   I picked all of the hot peppers that were on the plants.  I don't think we'll get  anything more, as this could be the very last warm fall week we have this season.  There were zero Anaheim  peppers, two baby hot banana, no serrano, and just these jalapenos.  Not enough to can hot pepper jelly this year.  I could buy extra from a farm stand, but I decided not this year.  I will freeze these remaining jalapenos, and keep a few for cooking this week and next. If you read yesterday's post, I forgot to pack my husband's breakfast for the day (2-day's prep in photo).  I decided to use up some of the smaller eggs, from the newer laying hens, and scramble them.  I added them to his breakfast (and mine)...

  I've been terrible at meal planning, but we brought home some tomatoes from our recent trip, and sliced them up. We made BLT's.  I have no idea for the rest of the week yet.  Other than I boiled eggs for egg salad. I managed to get that air mattress into the bag it came with.  It's not shutting all the way, but it's in the bag ha ha! I think my husband and I decided we need a complete day off.  It may happen this weekend.  We'll see, but that would be nice.  I feel like we've been working on the house for the last two years now.  There are so many people jealous of our updates, but it all started because it needed to be done, not by random choice. I'll admit, I am exhausted daily lately.  I don't even have energy to read a book, let alone crochet our blanket.  I was excited about garden season, but lately?  Not.  We do deserve a break now and then.

  Although it is super foggy this morning, the sun is trying to shine.  Yesterday was a very dreary, dark and misty day. I managed to accomplish a breakfast.  I'm still painting trim, so I get to multi-tasking and list writing.  I scrambled a dozen eggs, made sausage patties, and Einkorn waffles.  I used a random recipe online, but want to try the recipe Jovial has next time. I just didn't have yogurt on hand. I boiled a half dozen eggs for egg salad.  I guess that will be tonight's dinner (egg salad), while I work on the menu plan.  I also put another dozen eggs in the fridge for future boiled eggs. Daughter K's waffle iron, which I didn't like, and the recipe wasn't that great.  The recipe also said 1/3 cup of batter, and it was not enough.  I have to double the recipe.  I am reading reviews to look for a waffle maker for myself now.  Our state has a law, that says you must purchase a minimum of 6 chicks.  It was created to a...

  I froze several cubes of pesto last summer, and needed to use some up.  I just "melted" it down in a skillet first. I then cracked a couple of eggs over it.  There is already oil in the pesto. Cover the pan for a bit, and then flip.  Top crusty bread.  Next time I will add a layer of cheese over the bread first.  Maybe ricotta or something to go with the pesto. 

Remember all that lemon balm I harvested last summer?  Well, I made the infused oil with it, and got around to washing up containers and getting lip balm made. I used the same recipe (Mountain Rose Herbs blog) for Calendula / Shea butter, but swapped out the oil for lemon balm infused oil.  I prefer to use the metal tins, but summer brings motorcycle rides, and the tubes are smaller and easier to carry (and less messy on very hot days).  I ended up making a bit of both - tubes and metal tins. Something I learned - lemon balm prevents the breakout of cold sores.  I'll be giving this to someone to see if if will work as they state it does, and I'll be using it all summer. I had a bit of sausage, bell pepper and onion leftover from our homemade pizza's, so I whipped up a small batch of Sage sausage/egg muffins for breakfast.  I used jalapeno's from the freezer to add some zest to them too.  So good.  I'll be tweaking my recipe and hope to po...

In order to make bread pudding the other day, which is what the whiskey butterscotch sauce was for, I had to bake the bread. This is apple pie bread pudding.  I bake it in a pie pan.  I've only made this twice, and each time tweeking the recipe a bit.  It's a bit dry on top, and not like the ooey gooey apple pie filling.  It's simply apples, brown sugar and corn starch.  However, when we top this with whipped cream and whiskey butterscotch sauce.....oh my!  It was my special surprise for Hubby.  He's back on days now, but struggling to adjust to sleeping at night.

Shell peas are slowly coming on, so I decided to take the first picked bit, and toss it into a breakfast frittata.  I did not have enough for a meal for all of us, nor enough to freeze. This time I used cauliflower, potatoes (s liced) , and peas.  I had one gree n bell pepper ready to pick, and one hot banana pepper.  I tossed all of that into my cast iron ski llet (cooking a ll the veg etables first), and did not add any other spice/herb .  I just added salt and pepper and it was delicious.

I spent yesterday afternoon driving the 30 mile round trip to the "big city."  I delivered meals, to not only Dad, but Mom too.  I had s pent a few days in the kitchen with all four burn ers going and one crock pot.  I always deliver a "breakfast" meal to Dad too.  Meals included a new recipe ~ Creamy Sweet Potato Salad.  Have you ever made a potato salad with sweet potatoes?  This was a first for me.  Easy and delicious.  I t went very fast too. I know everyone but the one "vege t arian" daughter (who won't eat sweet pota toes) loved it.  I'm still p ushing her to at lea st tast e it.  If there is any left over today. I can't say I followed it exactly, bu t pretty close. You bake the diced sweet potatoes f irst.

Some days, okay almost every day, I forget to do something that should already be ingrained in my brain.  You know, the routine stuff? I forgot to collect eggs one day, and the next day I got this full basket of bounty.  You can see the four araucana hens are now laying as well again.  I got two eggs from them.  However, the full basket indicates that our black araucana is not eating eggs anymore.  She very well could be eating her own, but I'll have to keep watching her.  Maybe all of her isolation, and feeding her mustard filled eggs worked.

The other day my younger three girls were raving about muffins I made last year.   I had been discussing making pumpkin pancakes or waffles, so the topic of pumpkin was wafting through their busy brains. "They were HUGE!" "They were so good!" "They were really moist and big!"

We seem to have a situation in the chicken coop.  On October 21st of 2013, this is what we got from the coop:

We have had a few days of stormy, rainy days, so I took the time to slow down.  For some reason, the busy summer days tend to zap my morning time too quickly.  Oh, and we got hit by lightening (again).  This time I think the only thing it got was the cable box.  It sounded like a 22 shooting in the living room, and there was a flash of light.  We have a few lightning rods on the barns, but I think it's about time to get a few on the house....sigh...

On Wednesday I noticed a few ripe wild black raspberries.  I picked those, and later checked another location.  It took a while to cut down brush to get to them, but I found many more ripe ones.  It was hot, humid and I was picking them in jeans and muck boots.  I wasn't taking a chance this time on getting poison ivy.

I said I was not going to use my stove yesterday, but I did.  Hubby brought home some ginger root and club soda yesterday, so early in the morning I made a double batch. This is so refreshing on a muggy day too.  This is one of the recipes I most likely will have ready for when my older two are home.  They have been writing home about recipes they want me to make.

My youngest daughter emailed me this photo.  I thought it was so funny I just had to share.  This morning I certainly feel like that dog in the photo - still in my jammies, holding coffee, but with an ice pack instead of a towel.

I'm cutting breakfast costs down, by eliminating organic/natural boxed breakfast cereals.  That cuts down on buying organic milk as well.   That leaves breakfast to some type of egg dish, because our faithful chickens are supplying us an abundance right now.  So, in search for a veggie side (that was not a bread or meat, or a vegetable mixed into the eggs) that I can add to scrambled eggs, I found several. It's tough to find time to roast vegetables, so I roasted them for dinner, making extra for leftovers.  Then I simply re-heat them as a side for breakfast. What did we try?

(canned 8-26-2011, last jar used 9/1/2012) We haven't been able to get a break this past week.  It seems that the Lord is blessing us in abundance, and all at the same time - eggs, tomatoes, peppers, pears, etc.