Blog posts slowing down

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 spread, along with my oregano.  And yet I have several more herbs to plant from seed.

My husband's health insurance has now required us to participate in an on-line program.  We log in exercise, weight loss/gain, and take part in a walk challenge.  Today, I started wearing a small gadget to track my miles of gardening, housework, and just plain walking through the house.  It will be interesting to see what it reads after I've used it for a full day.  The programs also take quite a bit of my time logging in and reading materials, as well as tracking my progress.  It's definitely a time stealer having to do all. However, if we don't, our co-pay and deductibles will go up in cost.  Could this be another control issue by the government? 

.....back to the garden.

Warming Up ~ Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

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 notes to my journal, so we can make changes.  Changes such as making our own noodles more often, growing celery ourselves, raising meat chickens, drying more herbs and so forth.  By making a meal and looking at each ingredient, I can create healthier meals, and help our family become more self-sufficient.  For example, the broth/stock.  Once I have our meat chickens butchered, I can make my own stock and can it.  

It can all be done by ourselves, it just takes more time, and it's all worth it.

Whirley-Pop Vs. Microwave Popcorn

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.

Cooking Up Kale

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.  

Cooking Up Collards

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.

Zapping Germs

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 this afternoon, I could hear the kids watching YouTube music.  I busted out laughing when they shared The Duck Song.  Ha ha ha!  I think you'll like it too:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtN1YnoL46Q

Strawberry - Blueberry Muffins

 

The muffins were a hit.  I, of course, had to double the recipe.  We still have leftovers today, even after the kids snacked on them, and packed them in their school lunches.  I even think a few of the kids had one for breakfast.

Strawberry - Blueberry Muffins

3 Tbsp. canola oil

1/3 cup unsweetened applesauce

1/2 cup sugar

2 eggs, organic

1 tsp. vanilla

1 cup fresh blueberries

1 cup chopped fresh strawberries

1 cup whole-wheat flour

1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

2 tsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. salt

1/2 cup fat-free milk, organic

*fresh grated nutmeg to taste (optional)

*Canola oil/ or other organic non-stick spray, or cupcake liners

Preheat oven to 375°F. Spray 12-cup muffin tin with non-stick spray, or line with paper liners.  Set aside.

In a medium bowl, whisk together oil, applesauce, sugar, and eggs.  Add vanilla, blueberries and strawberries.  In a separate bowl, blend flours, baking powder, and salt.  

Alternate mixing the flour mixture and milk, into the oil mixture.

Pour batter into muffin tins. 

Bake 23-30 minutes until golden brown.  Don't forget, these need to cool longer because the fruit inside them will be very hot.  Allow them to cool about 20 minutes before you remove them from the pan.

Bread Baking Day

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 packings.  I can use my own farm fresh eggs also.  It makes a much healthier snack at home too.

Serving Up Soup ~ Cutting the Spending Down Even More

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 may sometimes purchase it and cook with it right away also.

Homemade Granola

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.    

Healthy Start

My days are so short anymore, especially with having to restock firewood, hanging the laundry outside, and other chores that I decided it was time to start getting back in shape.  It's not a "new year" thing for me.  Today was day 3 in going back to the gym to work out.  I have to say, it wasn't as hard as I thought, considering I had been splitting wood by hand and other work around here. 

If I want to be a better writer, I need to have better health.  We hit the gym at 5am this morning.  This means we preset the coffee pot for 4:30am so I can down a cup of coffee and a banana.

Balancing Life

In my midst of walking for 60 minutes, it became the hardest when I hit 45 minutes.  I read No Plot?  No Problem! up to that point.  I decided to put my headphones on and turn up the volume, which indeed pumped up the speed.  Thank you Toby Mac!

Before that, I decided to get up early and write.  Well, that didn't work out so well.  The two younger kids were up at the crack of dawn - bugging me!  Talk about torture.  Hrmmmph!  Give them a day off of school, and they wake up early - too early.  Give them a school day, you can't get them out of bed.

Medical bills, exercise and weight loss

The kids accident has put everlasting memories on all of us.  After we regained our sanity, we can now have a conversation without tears,.  However, I am drowning in medical bills.  Aftern numerous phone calls, calling and calling and sitting on hold, I am now a firm believer of getting everyone in shape and staying that way. 

Keeping the doctors visits down to a bare minimum will save us money, and we will live healthier and longer lives.  Although the medical bills are from an accident, I am seriously looking at my health, and everyone else's health (kids, husband) differently.  Now, don't get me wrong.  That doesn't mean I am running out and getting a physical, mammogram and everything else that's required at my age.  It means I am faithfully exercising daily, watching what we eat more than ever, and drinking more water than juice and pop.

Then, just maybe, after I lose weight and get in shape, will I consider getting my physical.  Maybe.

After I challenged myself to 30 days of walking for at least 10 minutes a day, I lost 2 pounds.  I missed one day and the other days were anywhere up to 20 minutes of walking.  Now, I am up to 30 minutes and some days, I walk 1 hour.  I feel better, but I have a loooooong ways to go.

I'm getting a lot of reading done on the treadmill these days, but I should have invested in a Large Print Bible.  I could be reading my daily reading while walking too.  I've influenced the kids too.  I know have to fight for the treadmill.  They come toting books and invade my room for hours.  At least they are staying fit.

Now....if I could just stop eating Milk Duds while I sit and read my Bible.....and whoever said prunes were tasty must have been sleep deprived.