Pioneer Woman at Heart

Bedding dried on the clothesline smells the absolute best! Birds chirping make you smile. Sunshine is medicine for the soul.   Enjoying it as much as I can.  Rain returns this weekend. The chicken coop was spring cleaned.  Man it needed it.   I was hoping we'd have them moved by now, but nope.  Anyway, they are happy ladies. Although a pine tree fell and slightly damaged the lilac bush, it has spring buds.  There is a lot of debris that needs cleaned up before the first mowing.  The main trees were cleaned up, but limbs and twigs remain. New recipe tried.  Einkorn banana muffins (recipe is from A modern Homestead online).  These muffins are basically a one bowl recipe if you sift your pre-measured flour (I used einkorn all-purpose flour) over the mashed bananas.  They use 1/4 cup honey or maple syrup.  They bake up very nicely and are very good.  I will be trying these with some added cinnamon/nutmeg maybe, and there ...

  Just when we think we will have more free time, we don't.  It's been super busy around here.  Most of my recent days have been busy in the kitchen. I tried a new roasted recipe (see below), but didn't feel it was worth the flavor.  We prefer this recipe for Spiced Nuts (more variety of flavors): 1 egg white 1 tsp. water 1 Tbsp. maple syrup 1 tsp. ground cinnamon 1/4 tsp. salt 1/2 to 1 tsp cayenne pepper, ground 1/4 tsp. ground cinnamon 1/4 tsp. ground coriander 3 Cups almonds, peanuts, pecans, etc. (we like almonds, cashews, walnuts and some raw pumpkin seeds) Preheat your oven to 325 degrees F.  I use my rimmed pampered chef stoneware, but you can line a rimmed pan with parchment paper (possibly foil) too.  Coat with non-stick cooking spray. In a med. bowl beat egg white and sugar until it is frothy.  Add sugar, cinnamon, salt, cayenne pepper, cumin, and coriander.  Beat the mixture until combined.  Add nuts and stir to coat.. Spread the m...

  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...

  There is so much going on here right now.  Crazy busy with purging and re-organizing a lot of "stuff" in our closet.  I decided to take a slower morning, and tried Jovial's Einkorn (recipe is on their website) waffle recipe that uses yogurt in the recipe.  I had to use more dishes than I would like in the morning, but they were good.  They turned out nice and fluffy, but need cooked about 1 minute longer than traditional recipes (or they will be doughy in the center).  Delicious! We are going through every single tote that was in the closet.  Together we emptied 5 totes (so far).  I am washing them out and putting them aside for now (I may be able to use some for yarn).  We will not get rid of them for sure.  They are too expensive to buy right now (like about everything else). We are once again having wonderful weather, and the spring flowers are blooming on the homestead. Update on the chickens and barley grass.  They don't seem...

A rainy day didn't keep me down.  I had lots of indoor chores to do.  I was a bit sore from outdoor work too, so a break was a bit nice.  I puttered around, refilled the chili pepper, refilled homemade foaming hand soap, etc.   I made Einkorn chocolate chip cookies.  Although I only had their "all-purpose" flour, and not the Whole Grain whole wheat flour, they turned out delicious.  Just not as thick, but so good. Here's what our menu has been for the week so far: Sweet potato chili Tacos Breakfast for dinner - blueberry pancakes, eggs, sausage Lima bean soup Leftovers The weather forecast for the weekend changed.  We were so pumped to have a 60-70° day, but that has now lowered to a high of 53° and cloudy.  Time will tell if we get our ride or not. The bathroom remodel is still on hold until next week or later.  The truck shopping continues.  Hubby joked that he'd have a massaging seat installed for me, after givin...

I've never been one to eat oranges.  I'm not sure why, or maybe it was not introduced to me on a regular basis growing up?  Anyway, I am doing my best to be vigilant with all good foods this winter (on account of sickness on the rise too).  Clementines have made their way into my diet for the first time in a long time.  Regularly.  It's hard to find organic citrus this time of year too.  The store even cut back the size of bagged organic apples (so no canning applesauce yet). I have also realized, with my scale not moving for weeks, that I am not getting enough protein (or I'm building muscle right now).  I've been adding more to my breakfast and lunch now.  Black beans mashed with onion (cooked in the crock pot all day), topped with home canned yellow squash relish has been my favorite to eat with eggs lately. 

I was directed to another blog, by a blog follower, which has a different type of blueberry oatmeal muffin recipe.  Thank you by the way.   I have to admit, I did not follow the recipe entirely.  I switched

The Good:  we are still being provided with frozen, mashed garden grown sweet potatoes (and they taste great when reheated).   The Bad:   I didn't can applesauce this past fall.  Organic apples are too expensive yet, and our trees have not produced.

I've been wanting to try the Einkorn pizza dough recipe the entire summer now.  With the canner pot back in the kitchen, I was leary about trying such a recipe on such a busy work day, but I did.  I actually made these the same night of canning the carrot cake jam. I worked on the dough in between freezing the carrots too.  I had a few garden green bell peppers, some onions,  and of course home canned pizza sauce.  Wa-la! A homesteader's pizza for dinner.

I felt so awful that Hubby had no breakfast to take to work yesterday, and no lunch.  Literally.  We haven't been home but one day I think.  So, as soon as I could, I baked up a swiss chard/zucchini frittata topped with chives.

I found this book through our library's inter-loan system.  I borrowed the book thinking it was all about just milling your own flour, but it was way more than that. It's a cookbook with recipes for grains, legumes, nuts and seeds. It contains a recipe for einkorn flour hamburger buns too. The author has a blog, but the recipe is not on there.  The blog is Naturally Ella in case you are interested.  I found some goodies on there too.  I made my first hamburger buns!   I didn't use the egg wash and sesame seeds, but may do that the next time for additional nutrition.   I was just focused on getting them to turn out nicely.  I thawed an organic pork tenderloin, and made Rhubarb pulled pork in the crock pot.   Mmm.  And on homemade buns this time.  Recipe is in the book, "The New Slow Cooker Cookbook."  Those are oven rosemary roasted "fries" with home canned ketchup.  I would have made homemade Rhub...

I was fresh out of white and red potatoes, so this beauty donned the breakfast plate this week - cauliflower/pea and dandelion frittata.

In the past, I have made homemade tortillas using white organic flour.   First, I made flour tortillas with organic/non-gmo canola oil.  You can read about it here . Downside of making them with the canola?  You use a lot more oil than in the einkorn tortillas I'm about to tell you about, and the smell of the oil stinks up the kitchen. Second, I made them with real lard.  You can re ad that post here .   A huge bonus in making these?  You make them on a griddle, and they use no oil on the griddle itself.  Just the lard in the tortilla.  Very easy to make and less mess (and no smell).

Upon learning from a few blo gger friends about eink o rn flour, and the health benefits (and less gluten), I had to try some. I first checked the library s ystem for the recipe book, but could only borrow this one: I wasn't able to borrow the other cookbook einkorn has.  In fact, there was only one copy of this particular book to borrow from our inter-loan system (from other area libraries).