Pioneer Woman at Heart

Lately, it's been puttin' up, stocking up and just plain busyness in the kitchen vs. housework and garden work.  That time will come soon.  Cleaning that is.  We've been getting rain at night, so weeding has halted.  We got more storms last night again.   Although not all from my garden, I canned one batch of hot banana pepper relish.  It's Hubby's favorite and we did not grow cucumbers this year, so I won't be canning sweet pickle relish. It should last the 3 of us all winter too.  The jalapenos in it came from the garden and they are good! I got some organic asparagus blanched and in the freezer.  Three bunches and the ends were saved for soup this coming winter.  I had 1.6# of ends, and my soup requires 2#, so it was labeled accordingly, and I hope to put up more this week or next. Got more dandelion greens in the freezer, but I need more chard, collards and kale yet. I made a pan of homemade granola bars with oats...

To all of you who read through yesterday's long post, thank you for your dedication and patience to read through it.  Today's post will be much shorter. It's was gonna be a cold night last night (second freeze warning), so I trudged out to the barn and brought in more wood.  Hubby is already starting to show the signs of sleep deprivation and exhaustion.  He's a grouch.  He apologized, but he'll need a lot of rest after this long work week.   It was a chilly 30°F this morning, and the wood stove was going strong.  In October.  So odd. The coop got a good cleaning, and I stuffed the roost with extra straw.  I had to wait a bit for the temperature to rise, but it was still cold out there.  The ladies and gent will want the warmth in this cooler weather.  I had to fix their coop ladder too, and as I fixed it I noticed a hole chewed through the chicken wire.   It's between the main coop and the emergency smaller coo...

Thursday evening, to honor my hard work in the garden, Hubby surprised me by not working overtime.  He took me on a ride on the Harley, ate at our favorite steak house (which has special motorcycle parking), and ended the evening with adult beverages on the porch. Friday I piddle-dinked around, sucked down coffee, moaned and groaned, complained, let out heavy sighs, wished I drank the beer and not the Crown Royal the night before, and contemplated.  I won.  Even though we have weeds to pull, I decided I didn't want to poke my eye out bending over the 4 foot grass and weeding the sweet potatoes.  Hubby volunteered to weed wack it down to where I could easily see the roots, so I took the day off, in hopes for rain.    There was a 50% chance of rain at 10am, and that motivated my decision (although I'm out there at 7am and done by 10am). By the way, the rain arrived, and may arrive again today. Oh, I had inside work to do, like make a batch of turkey-zu...

Habanero peppers made their way to the freezer.  They will stay there until I have a wee bit more free time to can hot sauce or jam with them.

Zucchini has over-flow-eth-ed.  I know that is now a word, but it's the truth.   The freezer is well stocked - 4 more pint bags of sliced and 8 cups of shredded into the freezer.

We woke up to thick fog Monday morning.  School was delayed 2 hours, then eventually closed .  As I took the dogs out, it started to rain.  Urghhh.  Rain.  Like we need anymore.   Tuesday t he fog was ba d again - another school delay.   However, some lovely green peppers were stuffed and

Beets are finally filling up my freezer this fall.   We have a good supply of shredded zucchini, so the next ones went in the freezer sliced.  I know these sometimes thaw watery and softer, but I just drain the water and cook.  We use these mainly in our teriyaki dish over winter, but have added them to other casserole dishes and mixed vegetable sides.  I'll be honest, I'm surprised my zucchini is still producing.  It looks terrible right now.  I doubt I'll get much more, but would be blessed to get a few more. I purchased some large head garlic (organic) at the Farmer's Market, which is much easier to slice and dehydrate than my homegrown this year.  It's much smaller (in fact there were farmer's selling the smaller size for $.25/each as well).

I'm getting more peach jam put up, and for the first time, plum and apricot jam. All jams are reduced sugar.  These will go fast in my family.  I can utilize the plu m and apricot with other meals , not just PB and J's. The p lu m jam is delic ious!  So is the apricot! I'm  starting to put enough fresh plums, apricots and peaches in the freezer to enjoy all winter too.  I'm freez ing them until our our trees start suppl ying us an ample a mount.

I don't know why I even bother to borrow books from the library during this time of year.  I pick them up, never open them, and have a horrible time finding free time to return them.   It's in a town where I cannot do any erran ds but get gas in my car and pick up ice.  I returned everyt hing but one book, and decided to leave it at that.  The 60% chance of rain we were to get on Wednesday just flew off the weather map - "poof" it was gone.  No rain .  I need more hoses and a sprinkler, and I do not have them.  I already have three long hoses put together.  I'll be taking garden notes for next s eason, including where not to plan t my garlic.   In the 112 bul bs I p lanted , only 5-6 are as large as the largest one in the photo.  The rest are dinky.  It was like digging in cement, and I ended up with bruised knee s (even wi th a knee pad).  I'll save these (or a p ortion) for replanting, but will be checking fa...

Here is what I've been doing.  Freezing corn. 

In between running here and there, I have brought in more onions.  I am so glad we planted over 300, or we would have had zero.    Tiger, can smell certain foods a mile away.  I caught Tiger trying to get in a pot that I had used to bring in some onions.  Hilarious!   There was nothing in the pot a few scant onion tops.  He loves squash, watermelon, corn cob husks, and onion tops.   The pot was on the floor, because I made too many dirty dishes that day.  Don't worry, the pot was sanitized.

We shucked all of the sweet corn, so that once-a-year job is done.   Tiger was standing by for the first bag (right in the photo).  He loves to chew on the husks.

I froze more zucchini and squash for winter soups, sauces and casseroles.  Yesterday was a race against the clock.  Trying to put up the garden, and clean house both were a challenge.   See that straw?  That is my food saver bag method.  It's a bit hillbilly, but it works for now.  I simply seal the bag all the way to one corner, slip the end of the straw in, suck out the air, quickly seal as I pull the straw out.  Boom-ba-da-bing - sealed and most of the air removed.  

On a whim, I decided to find a recipe for making my own condensed cream of mushroom soup.  There are many recipes I do not make anymore, simply because I don't want to feed my family those canned foods.

I got 3 1/2 quarts of Seasoned Tomato Sauce canned. Dug up the last of the carrots and froze two bags of them.  It's not much, but more than I froze last year.  I'll need to plant more next year.     Canned 7 more pints of beets and 5 half pints of Pear Jam.