Pioneer Woman at Heart

Although the weather cooled down, my downstairs was pretty humid and warm.  It was cooler to be on the porch, so after a good bathroom cleaning, freezing more strawberries, and baking a pie, I high-tailed it to the porch to crochet.  Even though I should have been weeding, but.... ...rain arrived during the night and well, it's we again.  The battle of planting continued.  Not to mention the weeding. New pie for me.  Believe or not.  We missed out on getting a stockage of strawberries the last two years.  Not this year.  I made my first baked fresh strawberry pie.  Hubby was in heaven on this one too.  It was sadly the last two pie crust crumbles I had in the freezer.  I guess I better dig out my recipe and get that on the to-do list now.

 Beautiful s unrise . Although we ended up with cloud cover the remain der of the day. Grab a cup of java or tea today.  It's a long post.

I've been having what I call "apron days" here lately.  Starting my day in the "garden" apron, then the "canning" apron, then my "housework" apron, and ending it in my "cooking" apron.  Today's my day starts with draining more cheese.  Mmm!  Tonight we'll enjoy some with either hot pepper jelly, or port wine jelly, on crackers.   What we will get more of:

I ran out of freezer space, so I started canning the last of the blueberries.  I am canning a new blueberry jam recipe - Cinnamon Blueberry Jam.  It's from Taste of Home if you'd like to try it too. 

The 19 - 1/2 pint jars of strawberry jam I canned, are already being opened.  The family loves it.  I just hope I can keep some in stock all winter, as the wild black raspberries are on already.  I'm still watching our mulberries, but they are not ripe yet. The kitchen has been in over-drive, but not nearly as it will be when tomatoes are in harvest.  A few days I didn't even wear an apron.  It was that hot. The goats love me when I can.  Especially when they get the strawberry leftovers.  Not much goes in our compost this time of year.    I somehow managed to read an entire book in 2 days.  I am taking my youngest to the library for the summer reading program, and even though I have a ton of books here to read, I brought one home last week.  I never expected to read it either.   How did I do it? Well, I read in between making all those batches of strawberry jam, while walking on the treadmill, and taking...

I don't subscri be to many magazines, but I do utili ze my local library.   Just be fore the library closed for the holiday s, I picked up a few of my fa vor ites.  I also picked up on e that I typically don't read - Ladie 's Home Journal. In th is particular issue, I found anot her unique recipe, and one wor th trying . Luck ily, the recipes are al so on-line, so I don't have to type it out , and I can direct you to the correct source. Fruit Jam Crumble Bars (Adapted from Ina Garten's Raspberry Crumble Bars ) I used the idea of Ina Garten's recip e, but utilized my home canned pear jam and homemade gran ola.  I initially wanted to use my canned wild b lack raspberry jam , but we ate it all . I did not have sliced almonds and could have used more of the crust mixture, f or the topping, but these were wonderful.  It was al most like eating pie with your fingers. I used an 8 oz. jar of jam also , even though her recipe call s for a 10-12 oz ja...