Pioneer Woman at Heart

  I finally got around to make a full batch of meatballs.  I like to get this done before the freezer fills up. One year I barely had room to flash freeze, and made a mess with meatballs stuck to the wire shelf above, ha ha!   While the meatballs were flash freezing, I shredded up the very last of the picked zucchini.  I made us a batch of the most delicious chocolate zucchini muffins I have ever had.  I found the recipe this year online, and it is a keeper.  Yum!  I uses Einkorn all-purpose flour. I had two pounds of pork, so I prepped it for homemade sausage with home grown sage.  I let it sit in the fridge overnight before cooking it, so the ingredients can produce good flavor.  I apparently have two different recipes for this, and I added extra seasonings, so this will be interesting. I saved a few boiled eggs for snacking, and topped some chicken salad with them.  I may add boiled eggs to my chicken salad next time.  ...

Remember all that lemon balm I harvested last summer?  Well, I made the infused oil with it, and got around to washing up containers and getting lip balm made. I used the same recipe (Mountain Rose Herbs blog) for Calendula / Shea butter, but swapped out the oil for lemon balm infused oil.  I prefer to use the metal tins, but summer brings motorcycle rides, and the tubes are smaller and easier to carry (and less messy on very hot days).  I ended up making a bit of both - tubes and metal tins. Something I learned - lemon balm prevents the breakout of cold sores.  I'll be giving this to someone to see if if will work as they state it does, and I'll be using it all summer. I had a bit of sausage, bell pepper and onion leftover from our homemade pizza's, so I whipped up a small batch of Sage sausage/egg muffins for breakfast.  I used jalapeno's from the freezer to add some zest to them too.  So good.  I'll be tweaking my recipe and hope to po...

I woke up Monday to a warm 63°F and later a high of 87°.  And guess what?   We started the "resurrection" of the flower beds/rose bed/herb garden on Sunday (no chance in convincing Hubby to break out the chainsaw for wood chores in the heat either), and now we are to get 4 days of possible rain.  I guess the Good Lord thought I needed softer soil to rip those weeds out, ha ha!   Clean up before the end of the day.  But oh, so much more to weed (like about 60-70 feet of flower/herb beds). Monday, we labored (again).  Hubby mowed some more, we weeded, and prepped the garlic bed.  Oh that was a joy - windy as heck, and try putting plastic down in the wind.  It took us about 1 1/2 hours or more to pull up old plastic, till, and put the new plastic down.  Now it will sit for a week or so to kill off more weeds/grass before I fall plant. Laundry was put out.  Dried in seconds with the wind, heat and sun we had....