Review-Homestead Blessings-The Art of Cooking

I feel the need to give you this very important warning: DO NOT watch this dvd if you have nothing to eat in your house. Oh my oh my oh my!! Every single recipe they did looked positively scrumptious! They show you tips and recipes for breakfast, lunch and dinner plus a dessert. Let me tell you that I wasn't any where near hungry when I started watching it but I'll be darned if I didn't eat a snack halfway through it! That is the main reason I don't watch the Food Network. I could just finish a big meal, sit down and watch a Food Network show and then go raid the pantry. Something about seeing yummy food makes me want to eat it. And there is a lot of very yummy food in this video. They start off with breakfast of pancakes, fried potatoes and fried apples and onions. Along with giving you the recipes and all the steps, they also give you some techniques to use to make all kinds of different foods. There is such a sweet rapport between these girls that is quite enjoyable to watch. You can tell that they have been cooking together with mama since they were little girls.
Then it's on to lunch with pizza, tomato soup and salad with homemade dressing. There is even a little surprise with the dressing. Something that I have wanted to try but thought it took forever. It took her 45 seconds! I won't give away all the details because I want you to see them for yourselves.
Next up is dinner. This one is down home country cooking at its finest. Pot roast with carrots, potatoes and onions, home canned green beans with onions, buttermilk biscuits with gravy and peach cobbler for dessert. I love the fact that they cook so much of their food in cast iron skillets. I have a set and absolutely LOVE them. It takes a little getting used to using them because they take a little while to heat but retain that heat FOREVER! AND you never, never, never grab the handle without a pot holder. Those suckers get as hot as the pan. But for cooking, you just can't beat them.
This dvd is the longest, at 80 minutes, but it feels like it flies by. Unfortunately, they are eating all that good food at the end and you are left to rummage in the pantry. Another two thumbs up for the West Ladies.

Review-Homestead Blessings-The Art of Bread Making

Another home run for the West Ladies! The Art of Breadmaking teaches you everything you need to know to get started making your own bread from working with yeast to rising dough to enjoying that homemade aroma. They are so easy to watch and their advice is just plain, simple country know how.  They walk you through making loaves of bread, cinnamon rolls, hamburger buns, cornbread and more. If you are inexperienced at bread making or just need a refresher course, then this is the dvd for you. The bread that they make in the video is almost the same recipe that I use but they do it a bit differently. I am going to try their way today when I make bread to see which is easier. My daughter is begging me to make the cinnamon rolls from the video so I will re-watch it and write down the recipe...or  better yet, just do it along with the video. I have been watching them on my laptop while it is propped up on the counter. I should probably put some plastic wrap over the keyboard because, yesterday, it got splashed with cherry juice when I was pitting them for the marmalade. A sticky computer is NOT fun to type on!

Review Homestead Blessings-The Art of Canning

Yesterday, I finally received my birthday present. The ENTIRE Homestead Blessings dvd collection!!! You have no idea how excited I was to see that box in the mail lady's hands. Of course, I dove right in. There are 11 dvd's in the collection and I am going to post a review on each of them. Let me just say that I HIGHLY recommend these dvd's. They are done by the West Ladies which is a mom and her 3 daughters. They are absolutely enjoyable to watch and very informative.
Yesterday, I watched the one on canning. WOW! It takes place in their "summer kitchen" which is an outdoor area with tables and a stove and plenty of country kitsch. They walk you through, step by step, the process of using a water bath canner and a pressure canner (something I have only done once because it terrifies me!). They show you what equipment you will need and the basics of how to can jam, green beans, pickled eggs and okra. There is even a segment on sauerkraut. I really love that what you see is what you get with them. It is obvious that this is a way of life for them and not something that they no nothing about. They are such a sweet family and they even sing some of their songs on a couple of the dvd's. If you get a chance to see these dvd's or purchase them, I highly recommend that you do. I ordered directly from their site Homestead Blessings and the cost for all 11 dvd's was $179. I know, it's pricey but they are so worth it. You can also get them from Amazon but the price I found was $10 higher than directly from the West Ladies. I will be watching these dvd's over and over again. There is just so much information in them. In honor of reviewing the basics of canning, I canned some Cherry Marmalade this morning. I'll be sharing that recipe soon.
One more thing I want to share-the other day, I canned tomato sauce. The recipe I followed was pretty easy but it did involve straining out all the pulp, seeds and skins which was a bit time consuming. My husband asked why I couldn't just puree the tomatoes and can all of it. I told him that wasn't how my recipe was and I just don't know enough about canning to experiment. Well, I popped in the canning dvd the next day and guess how they make their tomato sauce? They puree the whole tomato (minus the core and ugly parts)! How's that for learning something pretty quickly?! Now I only wish that I had canned the tomatoes AFTER I saw the video!

Birthday Dinner

Last Tuesday was my birthday. Hubby asked me where I wanted to go to dinner and I told him I wanted to go to our kitchen. He looked at me kinda like he didn't think he heard me right. Yes, I wanted to cook my birthday dinner (and dessert). He just shrugged and told me whatever I wanted. It's funny how, the more you eat homemade from scratch cooking, the LESS you want to eat out. It has gotten to the point that most of our date nights are spent at home because we have no interest in eating at some restaurant that serves food that we have no idea where it came from. I went online once to look for restaurants in our area that serve food from local farmers. Know what I came up with? Nada. Zip. Zilch. There are no restaurants within an hour from my home that serves local food. To get something like that I need to drive 2.5 hours (one way) to Atlanta. Seems a little foolish to spend 5 hours in a vehicle to get what I can make in my own kitchen. And that, my friends, is why we eat at home.
So, back to my birthday dinner. My mom gave me a new crockpot (my old one bit the dust months ago) for my birthday so I put a rump roast in it to cook all day. That roast is from the steer we butchered months ago.

The picture looks unappetizing but it was delicious, I promise.

Once dinner time came around, I boiled some potatoes and set some onions on the stove to carmelize.

Once the roast was done, I made some homemade gravy and put the meal together.

Those are my home canned peaches on my plate. I only got 4 quarts of them this year so I am trying to savor them.
Oh my word that was good food!
I topped it off by making Lemondrop cupcakes with Creamy Lemon Frosting from The Nourishing Home. Nice and healthy...to make up for eating gravy!!!

Yep, birthdays just keep getting better and better, even if the number keeps going up and up!

Canning Tomato Sauce

Whew!! Today has been a busy day! After church, I came home and got to work on those tomatoes that have been sitting on the counter. I also went to the garden and picked every red plum tomato I could find (there was a lot!). I found a recipe for tomato sauce in the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. It was pretty easy (thank goodness). I washed all the tomatoes then cut off the stem end and any yucky parts, quartered them, tossed a few in a large pot set on medium high and brought them to a boil. Once they started to boil, I used a potato masher to squash them and stir them up. I kept adding more tomatoes, squashing and stirring, until all of them were in the pot. I actually had to use 2 pots because I didn't listen when it said to use a BIG pot. Lesson learned. Once they were all in the pots, I boiled them for about 10 minutes to get them all soft and squishy. Next, I started to use my little fine mesh strainer to strain out the skins and seeds but, after straining FOREVER, I finally got smart and used the mesh strainer that I clean all my veggies in. It worked beautifully and I had the seeds and skins and pulp in one container and my tomato juice in another in a jiffy. I set the pot of tomato juice on the stove again and brought it to a boil over medium high heat, stirring frequently. Once it had reduced by about 1/3 to 1/2 I was ready to bottle. I put 2 tbsp. lemon juice, 1 tsp. salt and 1 tsp. dried seasonings (I used garlic, basil, oregano and rosemary) into each quart jar and then ladled the tomato sauce into the jar, leaving 1/2 " headspace. I wiped around the rim with a clean cloth, put on my lids and rings and processed them in a water bath canner for 40 minutes. After all that work, I only got 3 quart jars! Next time I will make sure to use pint jars. At least it will SEEM like I have more!!!

Sharing at The Prairie Homestead, Frugally Sustainable

Sorry posts have been so inconsistent for the past few months. I really wish I had time to post something witty, insightful or educational every day. I REALLY wish I had something witty, insightful or educational to SAY on a daily basis but sometimes the work of just "being" takes up a lot of time. Right now I am staring at a counter full of ripe tomatoes that, if I don't do something with them in the next 4 seconds, they will rot. But, before I can do anything with them, I have to clean out about 40 jars of old canned stuff from the beginning of my canning days. You know, the ones before I actually knew what I was doing and used past-its-prime produce which is now inedible but still taking up valuable pantry shelf space. Then, once that is done, I have 7 pounds of fresh cherries to do something with. I have picked out some canning recipes in my Ball Blue Book but, again, I need to get those doggone jars cleaned out! I would just start on them right now but hubby needs me to do some mowing so he can start burning old branches, grass and how-knows-what-else-is-in-those-piles! We have finally gotten enough rain that if his burning were to get away from him, it can't go far. Speaking of rain, the other night we had a doozy of a storm. Came up out of nowhere and there was a mini tornado in it. Passed right in back of the house. Blew down all kinds of branches and, for about, 10 seconds, whipped up everything in front of the windows and blocked the entire yard from sight! It was a little scary because there was a bolt of lightning that struck so close the light was in the house and the boom really hurt our ears. Lots of downed branches but we only lost power for a few seconds. That was good because I was right in the middle of cooking dinner. Lord knows, we don't like anything delaying a meal for us!!! Hubs spent some time yesterday picking up the big limbs with the tractor so the twins get to spend some time today picking up the little ones with the Buggie. They don't really mind doing that because they get to drive the Buggie all around the property. That is freedom in the eyes of a 12 year old!
Great news...We are getting a pool!!! It is just an above ground one because we will be building a new house in a few years but it is being installed by an actual pool company. No more Walmart pool for us. We bought one last year and it was a piece of junk. Then pump was no where strong enough to circulate the water so we had lots of problems with algae and really icky stuff even though we tested the water often and cleaned it once a week. Our new pool is a little bigger than the last and it comes with an automatic pool cleaner. Woohoo!! Hopefully, it will be installed Monday or Tuesday. We really miss being able to jump into a nice cool pool after working in the hot sun all day. When we do build the new house, we will have an inground pool put in. I told hubs to make sure he budgets for a nice one!
I have begun crocheting again kind of regularly. I have decided that I will make baby blankets for all the children born in our church. So far, I have given away 2 blankets (1 boy, 1 girl). Like an idiot, I forgot to take pictures of them. They turned out beautifully if I do say so myself! A friend of my mom's taught her and I to crochet when I was 8. I hadn't really done much of it in the last few years and I just felt the urge to be creative. Now, I work a bit on it each night when we sit down to watch tv. I hate for my hands to be idle if I'm sitting down, so this works MUCH better than using my hands to bring food to my mouth!
I guess it's time to go wrap up the leftover pancakes and stick them in the freezer and get to work. Honestly, I will try to get back here more regularly.

Happy Birthday To Me!!!

Yes folks, today is my 43rd birthday. Forty three years of living and learning and boy, have I learned a lot! Why is it that, once you get to this age, you wish that you knew most of this stuff when you were younger? It wasn't like I was incapable of learning it. I am sure my parents and grandparents trid to teach me many of these life lessons but, being young and knowing everything already, I didn't listen. Hubby says it's because in order for a lesson to be really learned, it needs to come with a little bit of suffering (or a whole lot, depending on how stubborn you are). He may be on to something. All the really good lessons I have learned have come to me through some kind of trial.

DON'T FOOLISHLY SPEND YOUR MONEY
This gem was learned over ten years ago when we almost lost everything we had worked so hard for. It has taken us all these years to start seeing the end of that VERY long tunnel. Lesson learned? We don't need STUFF! No vacation or grown up toy will ever satisfy us the way being debt free does. (or will do once we actually get there!)

THINK BEFORE YOU SPEAK
Ahh yes, learn to keep my mouth shut. This is one I still struggle with today. I like to have the last word. My father used to tell me that the only time he ever thought about strangling me was when I wouldn't let something go. Of course, he never had a problem with me standing up for what I believed, it was all those other stupid things I would blurt out that showed just how ignorant I really was, like arguing that adults have it made and can do whatever they want and they are just being mean to their kids by making them do chores. I was an only child so lots of chores fell on me. Little did I know that mom and dad were teaching me how to live on my own. Yes, the good Lord is driving this point home with me on a daily basis for He gave me a son that is soooooo like me. I have never apologized to my parents as much as I have since he began talking.

NOBODY OWES ME ANYTHING
This is one that I did learn pretty early (thankfully). I see so many young people walking around with a huge chip on their shoulder because they are under the mistaken impression that they are owed something by the world. This one really gets under my skin because I have 2 step daughters that have all of a sudden begun thinking that we didn't do enough for them and that, even though they are full grown adults, we should still be supporting them. They don't think they should have to work because they have kids. Umm, hello, I had kids and worked. You gotta do what you gotta do and quit bellyaching about it! The twins are definitely being raised to know that they have to pull their weight and then some for the rest of their life.

EAT YOUR VEGETABLES AND GET OFF THE COUCH
Don't laugh. This is a very important lesson that way too many people don't know. I was an incredibly picky eater growing up. My parents never really pushed me to try new things and if I didn't want to eat something, I didn't. That set me up for one of the biggest obstacles that I have had to overcome in my adult life. Well, that I am currently overcoming. This world is changing and I don't think it is for the better. I think, in the next few years, our way of life will be changed drastically. There won't be any room for fussy eating so I better get used to eating (and liking) everything that I can grow myself and that hubby can shoot. Again, sweet Jesus blessed me with a son that used to be every bit as picky as me. "Used to be" because I am no where near as patient as my parents were with me and little man has to try whatever is on his plate and not eating veggies is non negotiable. He is MUCH better nowadays as he is almost 13 and consumes EVERYTHING in the house!
As for the exercise part, well that is still a work in progress. I DON'T sit in front of the tv at all, but I could move more. I am working on it while trying to get the youngin's involved.

ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS WORK ON MY RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD
This was rarely talked about when I was growing up. I was raised Catholic (I'm now a Methodist) and my family went to church but I never really had a relationship with God. Sure, I believed in Him, knew about Jesus and what He did for me but we just never really talked about it. It was only last year that I read the entire Bible from cover to cover. Only a few years since I even CONSULTED a bible. Now, that is very sad to me. Hubs and I have made sure to really involve the kids in our relationship with God. We pray together every day, we try to do daily bible reading (I really need to improve this because it falls to the wayside more often than not) and we talk about God every single day. I want the kids to feel their relationship with the Lord is second nature, something they naturally work on every single day.

There are so many other life lessons that I have learned but those are the ones that have been the most important so far.
Before I leave, I have a cute little comment from a friend of mine. Last year, on her 42nd birthday, her mother called her and asked what she thought of being middle aged.  My friend laughed and told her mom she was no where near middle aged yet. Her mom responded with this, "Honey, do you honestly think you'll live much past 84? You're middle aged, dear." Gotta love moms!!!!