Pioneer Woman at Heart

  I'll admit, the cooler weather has been nice lately.  We've had to turn a few heaters on too.  The rain is moving in, and for several days.   If you blinked, you would have literally missed this beautiful sky Monday morning.  It was there one minute, and gone the next.  I was lucky to get the camera in time. Wash, slice and dehydrate the mix of garden hot peppers.  Keep those seeds for more heat in the "fire powder."   I used my mats to keep those seeds.  In the past, I used parchment paper. Dehydrate according to you dehydrator instructions.  I have a small coffee grinder I used for grinding herbs, and I when these are dry, I grind them up, and pour them into a recycled spice jar and label. It's a great way to use up all those leftover hot peppers in your garden.  You could freeze them too, but I find that drying them and grinding them, makes a nice spice flavor to add to meals.

  You can dehydrate the last handful of hot peppers in any form, but I place them in my food processor and grind them up to small bits. (dehydrated in the photo) I then spread them out on parchment paper and dehydrate in my dehydrator.  If you have an air fryer, most have a dehydrate option. When they are all dried, I put them in a coffee bean grinder (used only for grinding dehydrated items), and grind into a powder.  I store in an air tight spice jar. Add the ground powder to any recipe to add flavor.  I use it a lot in our breakfast casseroles/frittatas and scrambles. Yes there are Christmas towels in there😂 I fear for our world we now live in.  More and more people we know are sick with covid.  It's spreading like wild fire in our area.  A co-worker of my husband's could use prayers.  He is the same age as me, and was moved to a different hospital with covid.  Both of his lungs collapsed.  His name is Lauren (not sure if I'm spellin...

My hot pepper plants still give-ith.  If there is such a word.  This mess was ground up and put on parchment paper in the dehydrator.  Once dry, it will be ground into, what I call, Fire Powder. I haven't had time to pull anything else from the garden.  Now we are dodging rainfall for the entire week. I attempted to get my to-do list tackled, but it rolled over into today.  I did however, remember to drain a jar of homemade vanilla extract I had sitting on my counter for a few days. Last weekend I bought the Sunday paper.  I haven't read a local newspaper in a long, long, long time.  The comics were the only good thing in it.  I remember as a kid we'd take silly puddy and press it onto the comics.  Dad would save the comics for wrapping paper.  Oh the good ol' days.

While we are getting things checked off the to-do list, one thing remains - chimney sweep.  They called and canceled on me.  They guy called in sick.  They later called back and rescheduled me for Saturday, so any Saturday afternoon plans are now off the books. We got new solar lights on our driveway poles have been installed.  I also put two reflector poles near the new trees we planted, so plowing won't destroy them this winter.  I got my garden house unscrewed from the outside spigot, but still need to put it away.  Today, I'm taking down my shower curtain and liner and washing them both. It was cloudy yesterday, but windy.  Although I am down to two clotheslines (we took the 3rd one down), I crammed it all on including bedding. While laundry was getting washed and put on the line, I delegated some chores to Hubby and Youngest.  They now have their own to-do list, and it frees me up and less stressed. Since Plan A didn't pan out, Pl...

I mentioned a while back that I would try another tortilla recipe, but this time I used lard.  I forgot I even had the recipe until I was looking for my whole wheat pancake recipe one day.  Tip:  Tortilla presses are more for corn tortillas (or masa), so you'll need a rolling pin for this recipe. This recipe got all thumbs up from the family.  The tortillas are softer and we all like these better than the tortillas I have been making with organic canola oil.