Pioneer Woman at Heart

One Flourishing, Frugal and Fun Family!

One family learning to live off the land, cut back on expenses, and to live a simpler and a more self-sufficient lifestyle.

Adopted Motto

"Eat it up,
Wear it out,
Make it do,
Or go without."
~A Pioneer Sampler, by Barbara Greenwood~

Thursday, August 4, 2011

More Pickles ~ Fun and Frugal Entertainment

Ahhhh......more pickles.  And yet I still have some producing on the vines.  And more on my table.  Gotta love those pickles.  I really need to get my root cellar dug. 


In the evening I typically try to un-wind as some point.  To do that I grab whatever craft I am working on, or do what we did last night.  I could classify it as exercise too. 


If you follow my blog daily, you know that part of our family motto is "wear it out."  So we dug out the old 45's and danced.  And laughed. 


I think my kids just experienced culture shock or something.  They spent most of the night laughing at me having such a good time.  From "Jim Dandy" to even older titles, I played half way through the stack.  Of course, I still had 45's from my teen years, and played a few of those (Don Henley and more).  At one point in my life my mother had a garage sale, and I sold all of my albums, which the kids are still complaining about.  My first album ever, was J. Geils.  


Even thought those albums are gone, we still order the titles on CD from our local library.  My kids actually like some the music I used to listen to.

I ended the night with some soothing oldies from back in the 70's or older.  From what I could tell, only one 45 is cracked and one is chipped off.  The only complaint from me - my record player is not loud enough (ha ha ha ha!).

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Embroidered Drink Cover Pattern

It appears that the pattern for these have been moved on Martha Stewart's site.  

Click on Embroidered Drink Cover

When that comes up, click on the highlighted words "print the template" in the paragraph, to print off the pattern for these. 

 Adding a photo of one of mine.

I used a disappearing ink to trace mine, and embroidered them right after I traced them.

Hope this helps.

Straight from the Garden

I spent the entire day in the kitchen yesterday.  I just kept going through the garden goodies, until I was down to zucchini.  


I took the few carrots I pulled, and one of the green peppers, and made our favorite Confetti Corn Muffins.  I used cornmeal from our trip to the Mill last week.  If you click on the highlighted recipe name a few lines up, it will take you directly to the recipe.

These muffins have so much flavor when they are made with freshly picked garden vegetables. 

My baking didn't stop there either.



In between flash freezing green peppers, I mixed up a batch of Zucchini-Banana Squares (we call them brownies).  We make this every summer with freshly grated zucchini.  Again, if you click on the recipe name a few lines up, you will be taken to the recipe directly, where you can print it.  It is from Heart Healthy Living.  We love these.  We don't frost them to keep it healthy, and they are gobbled up in one day.  We have also baked these for guests that have stopped in, and gotten good comments about them.


And, yet there was more to bake.


I used one kohlrabi, one onion, one green pepper, one small zucchini, a few cloves of garlic (the only item not from my garden, but hopefully will be growing next year), and one handful of orange, cherry size tomatoes.  They made a delicious kohlrabi frittata, very similar to a potato frittata.

I ended up cooking the small handful of broccoli and cauliflower for a side dish to our garden dinner.

So far, we have saved seeds from dill, cucumber, peas, and green pepper, for next year's garden.


Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Tatting Continues

I picked up some vintage threads at a SCRAP store in Michigan about 3-4 years ago.  I am making use of those and practicing my tatting with much smaller needles and thinner threads.  This one would have been completed all the way around, but I ran out of thread.  I found more pink and yellow in my supplies, so I will continue to practice, and create useful pieces.

Garden Explosion!

I came inside today, with a lot of garden goodies.  I am still freezing my green peppers - over 30 of them today.  We planted them purposely to freeze, and use in canning our salsa, but our tomatoes are not ripe yet.  I could really use a dehydrator, so that is going on the "wish list."  

Last year I experimented with freezing in pint and 1/2 pint canning jars.  This year I already have 6 1/2 pints of green pepper and have run out of jars.  This, however, saves us on buying plastic bags, and putting plastic in our garbage can.

I made 2 more quarts of Refrigerator Pickles (having saved the liquid from the last two quarts of pickles).  I also made 2 quarts of pickled banana peppers (with cayenne).  The banana peppers are a complete experiment, not having found a recipe for them.  

I still have enough cucumbers for one more quart of fridge pickles, several zucchini to shred and freeze for bread, brownies and other meals.  I brought in a few more kohlrabi, which will bless our dinner tonight.

I pulled 4 more onions, and hope to use them for dinner and for breakfast.  

Everything that was to ripe to eat, treated the chickens again. 

This is what happens when I spend the entire day at the dentist.  Golly, I don't want to even get started with that either.  I took 2 girls for "cleanings" and came home with them only getting x-rays and looked at.  I am told they both need, not one more, but 2 more visits to get their teeth cleaned.  I can only see that they are abusing our insurance plan, and trying to get the most money out of it/us.  Our trips to the dentist require about 50 minutes round trip travel time, not including the wait time we have. What happened to the one visit cleanings?  


Update:  I am only half way through freezing my green peppers.

I decided to make Zucchini Banana Muffins, and Confetti Corn Muffins (to use green pepper and garden carrots I picked today).


That leaves me with a handful of cauliflower.  Hmm?  I think we can simply steam it, and eat an all veggie dinner tonight.  Along with another kohlrabi frittata.


The very last handful of green beans was not enough to freeze or eat for a family meal.  I decided to treat the hens with them.  Why not?  They are working so hard at providing fresh produce for us, they deserve a treat here and there.

It's Official


My oldest daughter got hired by a local area food chain.  She is now saving her paycheck to buy this beautiful horse named Bombshell Blondie.  She is tossing around the idea of starting her own blog, to write her journey in horse care, horse riding, and her overall love for horses.



And she will probably include her love for her dog Sadie.
I'll post her blog link, once she gets it started.

Here it is:  A HORSE OF HER OWN

Monday, August 1, 2011

Tatting Piece Finished

My finished, piece of tatting, measured out at 3 feet and 9 inches.  I am saving it for a sewing project.  I, however, have started working with a smaller needle.  I was lucky to finish this as quickly as I did.  Our power went out on Saturday for about 3-4 hours.  

With no electricity, I could not can pickles, cook, nor run water.  I believe it's time to invest in a generator, and an outdoor kitchen.  We do have the fire pit as a resource also. Anyway, I simply took that time to do my tatting.


This time, the power outage was due to work being done over 7 miles from our home.  It's the second time this summer.  We typically have power outage in the winter, or frozen pipes.  We did learn, that we can wrap potatoes in foil, and cook them in our wood burner, if we need to.


Sunday around here was not a "rest" day at all.  Our yard trimmers all broke, so the grass around my flower beds badly needed cut away.  We were lucky to borrow one again, and got most of the work done.  We have 3 barns to trim around the garden, and several flower beds.  It's an all day job, and the barns have yet to be trimmed. 

While my son took over the trimming, I harvested more dill seed.  Even though I continue to harvest it, I may not have very much.  It takes 2 tablespoons per pint to make the easy dill pickles.  I may have to plant more dill next year.


Last year, our septic needed emptied, and we had no idea where it was located.  Seriously.  After an entire day of digging, we found it.  Thus, this year, I am replanting the grass over the area that was dug up.  That took most of the afternoon, and we still need more seed.  The younger two helped me with that, and realize how hard their Mom works now.  We used a hand hoe and rake to work up the soil.


But work didn't stop there.  Two of our house cats are battling it out, marking one end of a hallway.  Despite that they are all "fixed" they continue to do it.  I finally broke down and purchased a spray to prevent the "marking" of the wall.  However, they now mark one specific spot on the carpet.  So.....out came the carpet cleaner.  We have plans to rip up the carpet and replace it with something else in the future.  


Someday, I will have time to clean my master bathroom. Hopefully rain is in the forecast, or I won't.  Ha ha ha ha!