Pioneer Woman at Heart

I am going through old blog drafts that didn't make the cut for some reason or another.  I found this one from May of last year.  It's sort of funny too.   Check out the magazine recipe to the left!  It's the nettle hair tonic I made recently (only without essential oils), only this recipe states to leave the tea in and not rinse it out.  Although it's been about two weeks, I'll be leaving it in my hair from now on. The rest of this is a draft from last year:

I'm bringing my husband home today folks.  He had the best care at the best hospital, and a high-five to Yawni, his nursing assistant who had us laughing a good amount of the time. Good laughter, good conversation, and lots of laughs.  Although I think Hubby talked her ear off with all my self-sufficient ways, and weed remedies, ha ha!   He got to talking about comfrey and I could not stop the man. He is definitely feeling much better and I can't wait to sit on the porch and love on him today.   Thank you for all your good thoughts, well wishes and prayers.  We will be celebrating life.  Tomatoes can wait.  Or they can be part of dinner. The temperatures here really dropped, so the tomatoes may have rotted overnight anyway.  I better get this posted so I can get the laundry on the line before sun-up.  I have to get that love of my life back home where I can spoil him again.

I am so happy they we have fresh goat's milk , as part of our self-sufficiency , and health reasons. T he gover nment just can't stop messing with milk th ese days.  Read here:  Fl avored Milk . . .  just passing this along for anyone interest ed.  " Diet" Milk? Ugh.

....planted a Colorado Blue Spruce seedling, purchased cumin seeds to grow again, and planted two new apple trees. ...planted more lettuce, radishes, beets, carrots, Swiss chard, and spinach.  Rain is coming so we will till and plant more after that. ...planted several zinnia seeds.

You can see the mud splatters on my daffodils.  The sun is shining and the flooding is over. Short post today.....15 year-old daughter has been running a 102° fever all weekend.   Have a Blessed Day!

For years, my husband has had to take over the counter medication for stomach problems (heart burn etc.).  Guess what?! After finally getting to the point where processed foods have been weeded out of our diet (we need to do a bit more weeding), we made a discovery. We had continued to buy canned tomato sauce from the store for many recipes.  However, now that I have been using my homemade sauce, with chemical free tomatoes, hubby doesn't get heart burn after a meal.   Imagine these medication businesses going out of business if more people made their complete diet without processed foods. The medication he used to take was not cheap either.  I had no idea that canning my own food would bring us more benefits than it already has. I just had to share. 

Well, it's another day to the dentist today (long sigh).  My daughter, who was in a car accident a few years ago, still needed broken teeth fixed.  As many people know, insurance only covers so many crowns in a year. Last week we went, hoping to get her current cavities filled (and crowning the last broken tooth), and once the dentist drilled the last one, she called me back. The cavity was too close to the nerve (sigh), and why they didn't know that in the x-ray is beyond me.  Anyway, they put something over it, and we are heading back to not only have a root canal done, but top it with yet another crown. What was expected to be a one visit cost of $187.00 out of pocket, is now close to an $800.00 out of pocket visit.  Aiyee! My tomatoes are piling up and I don't have time to do anything with them today yet.  My son worked third shift last night, and there is no way I waking him up to chop tomatoes for me.  I guess they can wait one more day. I ...

My son, bless his heart, went to work looking like he had not slept in a week.  His co-worker, told him he looked like he was on drugs.   His eyes were swollen, his ears were swollen and covered with poison oak, as well as his entire body.  I was about to take him to the doctor for a quick fix, when we started using a spray bottle of apple cider vinegar and water (50/50).   He had been using a wash that we've always used, followed by a cream to dry it up. It just kept showing up in other places on his body.   We mixed the water and apple cider vinegar and he sprayed himself, anytime, including taking a small bottle to work with him.  He looks so much better and he's not scratching. I think we found the culprit too - one of the dogs.  We think the dog slept with him, then spread it, and spread it.  We did a major wipe down/clean up too. Even I got it on my arm after walking in the house and only being home for about 15 minutes....

We are making great strides to get our meals back to unprocessed, natural, and healthier meals.  We have many steps to make yet, but have gained over the last year.  Tonight we are roasting two chickens we raised ourselves for meat, along with garden grown potatoes, and onion.  Soon we can add our carrots, but they are not up yet.  For a side, I picked a bowl full of green and wax beans.  I can season all of the food with herbs for the garden.  It feels so liberating to know I can feed my family without buying something from the store.  Although I know that stores need support, there is a limit to what we buy. Anyone can sell anything to make a buck, but it's the buyer who needs to be alert and conscience when choosing what to buy. While weeding the beets, carrots, more green beans and zucchini, I noticed we have a 3 inch zucchini already growing.  It will add to the meals, and desserts, nicely.

What a combination to write about too.  First, I decided to add more fresh garlic in my diet and found this delicious salad.  I had a few of the kids try it, as the rest of them had no interest in trying it. Southwestern Quinoa and Chickpea Salad (From The Doctors Book of Food Remedies, By Selene Yeager and the Editors of Prevention Health Books) 1 cup quinoa 1 3/4 cups water 4 tsp. olive oil 1 cup rinsed and drained canned chickpeas 1 medium tomato, seeded and chopped 3 Tbsp. fresh lime juice 2 Tbsp. minced fresh cilantro 1/2 tsp. ground cumin 1 clove garlic, minced 1/8 tsp. salt Place the quinoa in a fine sieve and rinse well with cold water.  Drain and transfer to a medium saucepan. Add the water and bring to a boil over medium heat.  Cover, reduce the heat to low, and simmer for 15 minutes, or until the quinoa is tender but still slightly crunchy.  If all the water has not been absorbed, drain it through a fine sieve. Place the quinoa in a medium bowl....

  It's official.  I blame the weather.  I think my migraines are about lined up with thunderstorms, and I am so sick with cough, sore throat, laryngitis, trouble breathing, watering eyes and so forth. Here's an article that pretty much tells about it. http://www.nbcwashington.com/news/health/Weathers-Influence-on-Your-Allergies-123917124.html Good for the garden, but miserable for me.  And I didn't need to read that if you are over weight, it's harder on your lungs - ugh.  Even more reason to get the extra fat off.

It’s that time of the year when my blog posts begin to slow down a bit.   I am already into the busy season of gardening, herb gardening, planting fruit trees, and repairing. Today, although the rain is holding back, we are to expect even more.  This is putting a hold on getting the rest of our garden planted.  In the mean time, I spend most days clearing out and splitting up my herb gardens.  Today, I have 2 buckets full for free green onion, sitting alongside the road.   It is so nice to step outside, snip green onion or whatever I prefer, and added it to a delicious salad for lunch.  It’s also nice to sit on the porch and enjoy eating it.  I did share my tuna with one of the barn cats today.  He was purring, so  I just couldn’t resist. Thunderstorms are 40% chance right now, and I sure hope they hold off.  I’ve been getting quite a lot finished in my herbs, and replanting them in other areas.  My lemon verbena has s...

The weather has been colder, raining, and more rain.   It’s typical weather for here.   Last year, we had so much rain, we lost half of our carrots and beets in the garden.    To supplement our food supply, we are raising meat chickens for the first time.   It will be interesting, and most likely a permanent change in our lifestyle.   After reading about what companies do to chickens, what the feed them, what they inject in them, we decided it was time to raise our own. Nothing tastes better than a homemade meal, made from organic, and other safe ingredients.  This was made using part water and part free range/organic chicken broth (much lower in sodium than typical store broth/stock), Amish made noodles, organic onions, carrots, celery, hormone/anti-biotic free chicken, thyme from my own herb garden and salt and pepper.  The only ingredient I questioned, was the bay leaf I put in also.   After making meal like this, I add note...

We have converted.  We have stopped buying microwave popcorn and purchased a whirley-pop popper.  I can remember my mother making popcorn for us that way as a child.  My kids love the flavor much better than the microwave popcorn.  I’ve never been they type of person to “cook” or “bake” food in the microwave, but have reheated foods a lot.  For us, the purchase of the whirley-pop was well worth it. Now, the next step is to find organic corn for the popper. Today is another laundry detergent making day.  It will fill a 5 gallon bucket.

I've been playing around with Kale recipes lately.  While trying to add more greens into out diet, I found this recipe that we tried last night.   It was delicious. Roasted Red Peppers Stuffed with Kale and Rice And thank you momdrinkstea for the soup suggestion.  I'll be searching the Internet for a recipe. We grew winter Kale in our garden last year, for the first time.  It mostly went to treat the chickens, as we did not grow a large amount of it.  I think we will have a much larger selection this summer.  

We grew collard greens, along with other greens, for the first time last summer.  However, the collards were fed to the chickens for additional nutrition and calcium, so it never ended up on the table. I've cooked Kale in several different ways - Kale chips, as a side, etc.  Collards have a different flavor and I decided to search out recipes that incorparate collards into the recipe vs. as a side.  I thought the kids would like it better.  We tried a recipe from Eating Well , and it was a hit.  I did however, add garden tomatoes, and organic tomato sauce.  Without the sauce, it wasn't very thick nor did it make enough to cover the whole wheat pasta.

This week my target cleaning area was my master bedroom.  I didn't do too much in there, but managed to clean the master bathroom.  With all of us sick, with different illnesses these last 2-3 weeks, I wanted to kill the bad germs. We now keep disinfectant (mostly vinegar/water mixture) to spritz areas that are handled often.  For example, the refrigerator door handles are probably touched the most, next to the keyboard, remotes, and door knobs.  I usually wipe down the not-so-obvious areas too, such as the vacuum sweeper handle, washing machine buttons and door, and desk stapler.  There is one other area I started spritzing clean - my crochet hooks. It never came to my mind to clean my crochet hooks until now.  If you think about it, we clean our kids toys often, by soaking them in bleach water or other solution to kill germs.  So why not our hobby tools?  I can't believe I didn't think to do it before. After I cleaned, and was crocheting t...

Today is bread baking day, and not the bread you are probably thinking about.  I grated and froze many bags of zucchini from last year's summer garden, and they bless us with zucchini bread.  Two loaves are already baking as I post this. Next on the list - banana bread.  Every time I bake, certain things come to mind.  For example, I added applesauce in place of oil in the first recipe, and it reminded me to can applesauce this coming year.  I now have a "mini" bucket list of items I need to start making from scratch, and a "to-do" list for other things that come to mind.  I typically use stone ground, preservative free whole wheat for my 1/2 of the white flour.  Each summer I make one or two trips and store it in my freezer.  When I bake, I make notes on my lists, as to what I need to stock up on and what I am running out of.  Each year I can plan it much better than the previous year. These breads are wonderful for my kids lunch pac...

We cut our food costs down this winter.  We still include meats and fish in our diet, but have now replaced more than half of our consumption, with dry beans.  We did this by making soup more often. Many people typically serve another food item with soup, and feel soup is not filling for a meal by itself.  However, by replacing the meat with extra beans, such as kidney, pinto, black and other beans, we made many filling soups. The trick is to buy the beans dry, bake them up in large batches, and freeze them.  When you cook, you can simply take out what you want without using canned beans (which typically have more sodium).  We also started making our soups/stews without buying broth.  We either make it ourselves, or flavor our soups with onions and fresh mushrooms.   However, for this to be cost effective, we also froze many garden vegetables, and dried home grown herbs.  If I see organic/free range chicken broth marked in clearance, I ...

I have always wanted to get started at making my family a healthy, homemade granola.  What prevented me, was the cost of healthier foods.  Finally, I made it.  We love it.  The only problem now is I am out of honey.  I made this batch with organic cranberries, flax seed, and lots of healthy ingredients.  It took a while to collect the ingredients when they were on sale, but it was worth it.  We only buy raw honey from local people now.  The nice part about making this, is you can pretty much mix it up with what you like.  I was out of walnuts, and had a small bag of pecans in my freezer.  It worked nicely in our granola. Baking the granola was all I could muster up.  We are slowly recovering from sickness around here, and the antibiotics are not doing so well with my stomach.