Pioneer Woman at Heart

I can say that my husband gets credit for finding this "pasta" at the store.  Ingredients are lentil, pea and cauliflower. (Source:  Google) I used the vegetable pasta to make Zucchini Linguini with Walnuts , but used the veggie pasta, and added some homemade pesto.  The texture is different from regular pasta, but it was good for being made with vegetables.  The only downside on this "pasta" is that it does not re-heat very well. I tried a random recipe I found online, to use that delicous rhubarb I picked (and my foot paid the price).  Anyway, the recipe called for any "berry" but I mixed some thawed strawberries with the rhubarb, and it turned out very good.  The recipe uses einkorn flour vs. all purpose white flour. It's called Einkorn Berry Crisp from Farmhouse on the Boone.  After I wrote up this post, I saw that I had tagged the recipe once before, so I apparantly made it before ha ha!  Oh my.  I also used monkfruit vs coconut sugar t...

  We got more rain yesterday and woke up to a foggy start for the day.  More rain possible today. Santa Fe Chicken Fajita marinade (for the grill). First time in a year to have to buy organic bell peppers.  There is a cold salad/relish that is great with this, but I do not have a green pepper. New recipe tried - Strawberry Cheesecake Ice box Pie.  Yeah, I cheated on the crust, but I didn't have the crust ingredients on hand.  I froze it, then topped it with remaining whipped cream and froze again.   It's been tried and sampled.  It's not thick like a cheesecake, but more on the lighter side.  Everyone loved it.  The strawberries are pureed with a bit of orange juice.  I think it was called an "ice cream" pie, but I'll look for it and link it up here later. 9 trays of oregano went into the dehydrator. I got my green onion starts in the ground before the rain arrived again.  

  Today I'll be freezing most of these bad boys.  We have already had a cold strawberry pie, but there is one more frozen one I would like to try.  It's been hot, hot, hot here, so frozen sounds great. We got lots of rain yesterday, but it stopped shortly after dinner time and the sun came out.  Our road almost flooded, but this year, a farmer's son came out and cleaned the drain that goes from his field to a branch of the river and then out to the river.  Thankfully it drained.  However, more rain is in the forecast. I feel like my to-do list keeps getting bigger and bigger ha ha!  I am trying to balance some indoor jobs based on when the rain is going on outdoors. My additional grow bags finally arrived, so we'll be busy filling those this week.  Our mower quit on us.  We had to borrow a trailer an haul a borrowed mower in for our "mower guy."  Hopefully we can get ours fixed.   The garden work has put a huge limit on my hand...

I finally got strawberries at the last picking of the season (not mine).  I have yet to re-vamp our strawberry patch and sadly have about 4 June bearing plants currently (with plans to move them and add many more next year).    I started a double batch of strawberry vodka.  We like this.  Recipes are all over the internet if you are interested.  I have more strawberries to freeze today. I made a batch of freezer pie crust crumbles too.  It makes 6 pie crust crumbles.  I use the recipe on King Arthur Flour (available online). My tip to do this recipe:  I cut the butter and put it in the freezer first. I then measure out the flour etc. and add a bit of it to my food processor. I toss in the butter and pulse it until it looks like this. I then add it to the rest of the ingredients and measure it out using my scale, and freeze them.  All I have to do is thaw it a bit, and add ice cold water and r...

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.

I picked over a cup of strawberries, and decided to make muffins with them.  I had a few last bags of blueberries in the freezer to use up too.  They are so good.  I was so happy to find a jar of applesauce in my pantry too. It's the extent of my work yesterday, other than washing a load of laundry.  Storm clouds moved in, but no rain, and just more humidity.  Hot, muggy and uncomfortable.  The kind of weather where you have to peel off your clothes at the end of the day.  My tummy was back to normal about bed time.

While the internet and cable was out, we did a lot of reading around here. We've been visiting the library much more often this season.  I was able to can a few things too.   One of the books I read, was A Killer Maize, A Farmer's Market Mystery , by Paige Shelton.  It was pretty good too.  In the very end of the book, the author shares recipes.  I have never made strawberry syrup, so I saved up 2 lbs. of my Ever-bearing strawberries and made some.  Although the recipe states you end up with 7 - 1/2 pints, I had 5.  Not sure why, other than the strawberries I used maybe.  Next time, I will use more if I have them.  This giveaway is closed now.  Winner is posted.

Although my naughty hens got into one strawberry beds, I was able to pick enough for a delicious summer fruit salad.  Here is the recipe for the dressing: