Weekend Updates

An Uncle of mine passed away and we had yet another family funeral to attend over the weekend.  He was 89, and a Korean veteran.  He was such a jokester and had a good full life, but pancreatic cancer took him suddenly and quickly.  It was a beautiful service, and we rode the Harley.  Uncle G. loved our Harley and I'm sure he was smiling in Heaven as we rode to his final resting place.  Such a beautiful day and my cousin's tribute at the church was downright emotional.  There were US Army soldiers there to do the flag folding, and a gun salute.  Just a very nice service.

Sunday morning we found out that a woman we rode with last year (in a group), was killed in a motorcycle accident.  She took a curve badly, tried to correct herself and hit a car.  No helmet.  

Remember that tall stack of library books?  I found recipes for dehydrator cookies and gave them a try.  We love these!  No eggs, no butter, and delicious.  Next time I'll put mini chips in them, but I'll soon try the peanut butter cookie recipe too.  These were oatmeal.

Here is the book the recipe is in.  I'm not an "idiot" when it comes to using my dehydrator, but there are hidden gems in many library books, so I always take a look.

Sunday morning I dug up the potatoes.  I'll have another post for that.

I also went out to do the first official tomato picking, expecting more than I got - 2 lbs.  Literally.  I need 45 lbs. to make sauce, or at least 25 for a half batch.  I am so disappointed this year.  It's definitely not going to be another 500+ lb tomato year.  They are small too. Too small.

The baby birds are born now, and they have left the nest.

Turnips were a failure.  They are small, and not very many survived.

Corn Relish Skillet Corn Bread ~ Extreme Clean Continues

I love our home canned corn relish. It's great on fish, meat, and one daughter (vegetarian), love it with her mashed potatoes when she lived at home.

I drained some and added it to basic corn bread.  It was delicious.  Next time I'm going to try this with einkorn flour. 

Recipe:
1 stick of organic butter, 2 Tbsp. divided (see note below)
1 1/2 cups einkorn whole grain flour
3/4 c. organic cornmeal
1 Tbsp. non-gmo baking powder
1 Tbsp. sugar
2 tsp. salt
2 farm fresh eggs, beaten
1 1/4 c. organic milk
1 1/2 c. home canned corn relish, drained well

Mix dry ingredients.  Mix wet (melt butter) and add to dry.  Heat your 10 or 12 inch cast iron skillet with the 2 Tbsp of butter (note: I used organic non-gmo olive oil and it worked great).  Bake in a pre-heated oven at 425°F.  Depending on the size of you skillet, bake 20 to 35 minutes.  Check center, if needed, using a wooden toothpick.  Cool a few minutes before serving.

Corn Relish - I use the Ball Canning recipe found: Here

If you are a regular follower, you know that I've attempted to extreme clean my bedroom closet, utility room and garage for 4 years now.  Every time I clean it up, the kids put things everywhere, and it's right back to a big total mess of chaos.

Finally, finally, I have my bedroom closet about 89% of the way purged.  Hubby has to go through some clothing, and I have to get busy on some unfinished crochet/knitting projects - too many bags in there of those buggers.  Oh it is looking so nice too.  I'm super excited to get started on the garage and utility room now too.

I have found a home for 2 softball helmets and my oldest daughter is coming over soon to take some school supplies I'm purging.  Just too much stuff now that the kids are all moved out (but one, and I can actually keep things organized and clean). 

On top of that I managed to re-stock the comfrey poultices.  I have a nasty bruise on my knee and needed one anyway.

Found this little article in while purging.  

Thought I would share. Now go wash your kitchen dishcloth - 4 billion living germs??!!

Meanwhile. . . .

. . . in the rose bed

I'm still weeding it.  It looks small in that photo, but it's the entire length of the kitchen wall. 

 I managed to spend an hour and pull out the 7 foot thistle though.  We are enamored in sweat bees this year, and I can only stand being out there so long, especially in the heat.  Nothing works to keep the bees off me - not homemade bug spray, nor water with peppermint essential oil.  They are horrible, and I cannot even enjoy the front porch now.  They are driving us all insane.  I will try setting a citronella candle out there later if I remember to do it. So far the winning numbers are, flyswatter-4,000, spider webs - 4.  

As for the vegetable garden.  I give up.  The weeds will come out when the plants come out and that's all the time I'm putting into it. I put out a plea for anyone's extra zucchini, yellow squash (we got zero from those plants that looked so good weeks and weeks ago), and hot banana peppers.  I'll be posting about what happened to our potatoes soon too.  Yeah, a really, really stinky, unsuccessful garden year.  

I still have flower beds to weed, pull giant weeds by my barns, mailbox and other various places.  You should see my chicken run, ha ha!  It must appear to the chickens as a jungle.  At least they have shade, ha ha!

It rained, so Thursday I woke up confused.  I had zero produce or fruit laying around my kitchen awaiting work.  I had my kitchen spotless.  Front room spotless.  Front porch unbearable.  So I decided to start back in my utility room/new craft storage area.  I have narrowed the extreme clean list down to: utility room, bedroom, bedroom closet and garage. I actually got a little done in each room too.  I have a few touch ups to do in the kitchen bathroom.  

I mended a hole in one of my favorite shirts, un-buried a bunch of empty 1/2 pint and 4 oz. canning jars, discovered more small balls of yarn....I am starting to see the floor of my closet.  Almost.

I refilled my homemade dry taco mix.  I use my homegrown, minced and dehydrated garlic for this recipe, as well as others.

My car still has a flat tire.  Hubby has had one excuse after another (or it's raining) to remove it and plug it, and it's driving me mad not having a vehicle to get things done.  I asked him to finally make a library pick up for me.  He told everyone that the library was "closed until" I bring them all back, ha ha ha!  

Random-ness

A big thank you to those leaving me comments.  They brighten my day.  Thank you to all who even visit my blog as well.

Wednesday was a strange day for me.  It was our daughter's (youngest) first day to school.  We were all up at 5:30am, and sitting on the porch awaiting the school bus.  The bus picks her up at 6:17am.  It felt very weird to be home alone.  Too quiet for me, so the music came on.

Before cleaning the kitchen, I had the washing machine going, and multi-tasked.

A handful of hot peppers were sliced and frozen, while I baked up a large breakfast egg/sausage/potato/sweet potato/hot pepper scramble.  It'll last the next few days, so we won't have to cook at 5:30am.

We needed tortillas for that scramble (needed more eggs, but I have slackers right now and needed two more eggs), so I whipped up some einkorn homemade tortillas.  I shared this a while back, but now the recipe is also online:  Einkorn Tortillas.

I also baked some Einkorn Snickerdoodles.  I knew our daughter would need some comfort food after her first nervous day at school, and my hard working husband would love a healthy treat.

I took down all the kitchen curtains, washed the windows and wood work, and put new curtains up.  They sort of look like bandannas and have a white back.  They will be perfect for keeping the kitchen warmer this winter, and blocking out the heat of the sun when necessary too.  I have odd shaped windows, so the valances will not fit, and are in storage for now.  I may use lighter curtains for spring and summer and just use these in the fall/winter.

Washed, dried and put away all my dirty dishes.  Counters were scrubbed clean and sanitized.  Stove top scrubbed.

How to Make Garlic Powder (Ground/Powdered Garlic) and Minced Garlic

First, if you are new to dehydrating, a book or booklet typically comes with one.  It has directions, times, temperatures, maybe recipes (depending on brand you buy), to guide you as well.  I apologize to all of you who already know how to do this.

Here is the one that came with mine.

 (This one is loaded with recipes on what to make with all your dehydrated goodies)

I also have these two books on my homesteading bookshelf as well, but plan to add more.

How to make garlic powder:

I chose a larger variety of garlic (Russian Giant) for this project.  Peel and slice the garlic thin and lay on the dehydrator trays.  I use gloves to do the slicing.  I follow the directions that came with my dehydrator, and dry until crisp.

Cool a bit after the dehydrator is turned off.

I use a small coffee grinder, place the dried garlic into it and grind it up to a powder.  Simply store in an airtight container with your other spices (out of light).

(dried)

To make minced garlic, mince fresh garlic onto parchment paper lined dehydrator trays.  Dehydrate, cool, and break it up.  Store in an airtight container.

The plan is to come back and share more books that you may find helpful with dehydrating in general.  If you do not grow a garden, most farmer's markets sell organic garlic. 

Garden Clean Up ~ Deep Cleaning ~ Stocking Up

The garden clean up has begun.   Garlic bed is mostly cleaned out, ready to till when we can, to prep it for replanting.  More mowing.

Weeds are being mowed down when they can, otherwise hand pulled, radish plants will be pulled next, along with the weeds in the turnips.  We'll soon unveil whether we have any.

My washing machine is now cleaned and sanitized.  My washer actually has a cycle for that.

The top and sides of the fridge were washed and cleaned too, fridge pulled out, floor mopped, water jug stand cleaned, floor under it mopped and sanitized too.  Basket liners washed, dried and put back, and another list of other "to-do's" was started.

I got 6 lbs. of organic broccoli blanched and in the freezer, about 3 lbs. of green/wax beans, and 2 batches of Cowboy Candy canned.  All those veggies were purchased.  It's a bit sad I had to buy them, but glad I have it stocked up, but really need more green beans.

Those extra stuffed shells I put in the freezer came out faster than I expected.  It wasn't for us however. It's always nice to have a ready made meal for other reasons.  A good friend of the family broke her ankle in 3 places.  We signed up to help bring her a meal.

We had a good weekend.  Mowing took much of the time, or I should say fixing the mower.  Despite that, we got two short motorcycle rides, and Youngest had a campfire party for the end of summer, with her friends.  I think she invited half the county, ha ha!  She starts back to school tomorrow.

Speaking of school, we paid $187.00 for her school uniforms, and they have not arrived, so we had to run to town and buy specific clothing on top of that, spending another $100.00 just to start school.  That doesn't include supplies.  We'll find out what she needs once she starts.

On the agenda for today?  Weeding.  Lots and lots of weeding.

Digging Day

I woke up disappointed it had not rained like they had said it would.  I have spent so many indoor days cleaning, that I was actually looking forward to the next extreme clean job.  I had very little motivation to walk to the garden.

After him-hawing, eating my bacon/egg scramble with an English muffin toasted and slathered in butter, and making 2 pots of coffee, I finally put on my garden attire and headed out.

I am so far behind at digging up the remaining garlic, and had waited for the rain to soften up the ground, so I started there.  We only got 40 of the 56 Russian Giant that we planted.  We planted 70 of the Moroccan Creole, and I bet we'll get 15 if we are lucky.  Not sure yet on the original variety we were gifted years ago yet.  Although the rain has barreled down, it's so dry out there that I bent my digger.

Note:  speaking of garlic, I'll have a post soon on dehydrating it.  Well, some of it, ha ha!

While others are swimming in cucumbers, we are lucky to get 4 yesterday.  Not one yellow squash at all this year, and the plants are already dying.  Not one zucchini yesterday, and a dinky handful of green beans.  Just a really, really sad year.  I tell ya', if you have an inch left in your pantry or freezer this year, fill it up.  You never know if you'll have a year like we are.

The pumpkins look good but they are again buried in weeds, and the popcorn is buried as well.  I am just running out of mojo to even try to keep up with it. Is it even worth it?

I blanched about 1 1/2 cups of green beans (only green beans to make it to the freezer this year), and had a measly 1 cup of blackberries to freeze (that actually were not sour).

The front room now has a new decor item on the wall.  It contains the new colors in our living room.  I have a few more things to clean and a few more items to buy.

My camping and garden journal are now updated.  It was extremely hot during our camping trip - too hot to hold a pen.  Literally.

Youngest (daughter), started her first day of the driving part of driver's ed.  They drive to our homestead and pick her up and she takes over the driver's seat.  At the end of her time, she picks up the next driver, and they drive her home.  It's a very nice way of doing it, so we don't have to drive her to the location every time as well.

More possible rain today.