4 Sweet Sisters

After a busy week of school, soccer games, dehydrating and canning; I'm a bit tired. Fall through early spring is truly the busy season for garden harvesting, pumpkin bread business and holidays here. For some reason every year it takes me by surprise! We've gotten most of the gardens in, had plenty of rain and are now fighting the varmints and the chickens. Don't those chickens realize a third of the garden is for them? If they eat it now they'll never get to taste those big lovely collard leaves! On the subject of chickens this is the first time that we've had almost our who crew molt at the same time. That means we have been getting less than 3 eggs a day from 12 girls in the past month or so. It's been a bit disappointing. We really use a lot of eggs here. I usually keep 4 dozen at all times in my refrigerator. Right now I' have about 8 eggs. I really don't want to buy eggs. Hopefully we are coming to the end. We have a lot of featherless hens out th...

A bad day canning is better than the best day shopping! Can I tell you that I have been going crazy wanting to can! But unfortunately there has been absolutely nothing available to stock up on and can. That is until these fabulous peaches went on sale for 69 cents a pound. That is a terrific price for where we live! It's been years since I've done peach jam. So I read up on all the procedures and on how to can peach slices. I made sure I had plenty of lemon juice, clean jars, lids, rings and sugar. I also watched Homestead Blessings, Canning addition. The Chickadees really enjoyed watching the West Ladies and I got a little braver about trying my new pressure canner. (I still haven't used it.) Scoring peaches for their hot tub time. Boiling for about a minute to loosen skins. Some of them just didn't want to loosen. I let them sit in ice water next to help even further. Some still were persnickety! Farm girl stopped by from the pool to help out. You can see some of th...

Today I tried my hand at blanching. We received over a case of cauliflower in our kitchen basket this morning. Amazing! My chickadees love it cooked or raw. Myself, I can't stand the smell of it and if it smells that bad why would one want to eat it? Yuck! Anyway, the girls really enjoy it. So I pulled out a big pot with strainer. Added a good amount of salt and fresh water. Brought it to a boil and popped in the cauliflower. I let them boil for 3 minutes, then ran them under cold water and popped them into freezer bags. Hopefully it will taste great! (I will not be taste testing) I had enough to create 8 meals, keep 3 fresh heads in fridge and give 7 away! It just seemed to multiply. What's your favorite Cauliflower recipe? I need ideas. Give blanching a try. It super quick and easy! julie

Another one of our favorite fruits is in season. Plums, Yum! My chickadee's sure can eat a lot of them. Last year we had so many from our co-op (we've actually never seen a plumb tree or is it bush?). We made lots of jam, crisps and cobblers. We aren't much for the cobbler but the crisp was a hit. I pitted, quartered, and froze them in quart size freezer bags. When we needed I pulled them out and defrosted . One bag per 9x9 pan. Delish! We also would just pull them out sprinkle with a bit of sucanat w/honey for dinner. They had a nice fresh, juicy taste. Superman said the reminded him of a stewed prunes, only fresher. I didn't think they tasted like stewed prunes, at least not what I remember. Well to day School Girl and I are got some jam put up. Actually she ended up working on some school projects for me and watching. Basic ingredients: 6 cups chopped plums ( i leave the skin on) 4 cups sucanat w/ honey (or any other kind of sugar you like) 1 package of pectin ...

I wanted to wait and share this as Frugal Friday post because so many seemed interested in it last week. Although I'm not quite sure that blueberries are the most frugal of fruits to pick! Here on the Gulf Coast you - pick prices range from $3 to $12 a pound. You'll need lots of berries for jam and freezing. Well, at least we seem to. Here's Farm Girl getting ready to sample a berry. Here's how a commercial patch is done. The blueberries are grown large water barrels of mulch. 24 pounds of berries later! Once home, I place all the blueberries in a deep cold water sink bath. Then I take them out by cups full to rinse. After that I line the counters with old bath towels and spread the berries out to dry. I do this with strawberries also. I also roll them around a bit to make sure they are nice and dry. This doesn't take long. Watch out for berry stealer's ! It's oh so tempting to eat and eat! At this point I bag up cup fulls for freezing. I did 24 cups, eno...

Kim in TN wanted to know what a good starter book on canning might be. I would recommend any of the Ball Jar canning books. My copy is from 1959 and works just fine. When I'm looking for a new recipe I usually Google it. Look at a bunch of them, figure out what ingredients my family will like and what they won't and go from there. Especially true of pickling recipes! For simple canning (that's what I do- anything that can be water bathed ) I follow the Sure Jell or Ball jam recipe. I prefer the Sure Jell Low Sugar, but I've not been able to get it so i use my same Sure Jell recipe, but substitute the Ball Pectin. Most jam takes about 8 cups of sugar! My recipe takes 4. You can really taste the fruit and it really seems sweet! If your following Weight Watchers it's 1 point for 2 tablespoons! (Nice when your having toast in the morning.) Other simple canning is salsa, and fruits where you use a simple syrup, water or fruit juice as the liquid to pack the fruit in. T...

I'm not feeling to "frugal " this Friday , but I did want to let you know about the online Make it Lovely Conference from the Girlhood Home Companion. My older chicks have been having a nice time talking with other girls about God's grace, organic gardening, and (today) starting your own business. Very neat! You can get more info here at Remembrance Press with Jill Novak . As promised I said I would post a picture or two of yesterdays work. We made 19 quarts of pears and a 2 1/2 quarts (6 pints) of pear butter. This apx 36 pounds of pears! Here's the cost breakdown. I don't count jars because I reuse them from year to year. There was a $3 off of Kerr and Ball jars in the paper a couple of weeks back. So I did invest in some new wide mouth jars. Great for fruits and pickles. Really just about anything, although I do like salsa made in the smaller mouthed jars.( It's easier to pour. ) Back to the break down: 36# Organic pears $29.80 about 83 cents per po...

I've: Made tea! -Planted pumpkins -weeded and planted calendula -drained (into the garden) & clean out rain barrel -exercised the chickens -found, uploaded, and ordered Fl notebook photos -have girls cleaning school room -started laundry -woke at 6:30 am -quiet time (i think i need more) Whew! Here's what I did on Saturday! Yup. I canned my own apple pie filling. Go here to 4 Reluctant Entertainers. I never would have tried this if she hadn't made it look so good! It was pretty simple and we had a huge surplus of apples. I would do a couple of things differently next time. 1. Add a bit more sugar 2. Not fill my cans so full! No we can make apple pie any old time w/o as much work. Give it a try and let me know how it goes. julie

Frugal Friday We've been involved in a couple of unit studies this year where we have had many fun, free and interesting field trips. This one pictured below was to our County Dump. I'll admit my favorite part was riding around on the air conditioned bus, but truthfully I learned so much. Did you know that many counties/cities recycle paint? While we were at the dump I was able to pick up two 2/3 gallons (of very expensive & fresh) blue paint. (My younger chickadees have been wanting their room redone in blue) So this was perfect timing. All the other moms were either cheering me on , or just thinking I'd lost my mind! I did have to add white (which I had on hand ) to bring down the color a bit ( now, I know why someone got rid of it). It was one of those colors that gets much darker as it dries. But it still turned out great. We also received bunkbeds that we modified a bit and painted white. Country Blue and White, I'll post more on the makeover when I'm t...

Has anyone ever tried Pomona fruit pectin? I usually use Sure Jell Low Sugar but I can't find it locally. I've tried the Ball No Sugar but my stores seem to be out of it also....Hmmm. I live in suburbia and I can't find pectin! Any help on different types like Pomona etc would be appreciated. I think I'm going to have to order online. I'm also having trouble getting lids. Help! I need a bit of advice on pectin. julie

It's finally that time of year again, when the strawberry farms open their fields to all us pickers! We headed to Plant City on probably the last cool day we will have for quite awhile. The temp was 70 degrees. Perfect weather for bringing in the berries. Before we started we sat down to a great picnic lunch of apple butter and pb sandwiches. Here's Grammy showing us the proper way to partake of a Teddy Gram. She makes them look soooo good. She's also a computer geek and likes a good adventure! Superman and Urban Girl (sporting her Country Girl cap) washing up after lunch. Farm Girl and School Girl hanging around, ready to get this show started. Farm Girl and her younger sister (the Little Chef) come for the all you can eat strawberries and horses. The fields... Not as good as they looked last year due to nematodes , but there are still strawberries out there! The chickadees eating strawberry twizzlers and being sisters. Do they count as strawberries? Now we're ...

Lunch: Fresh whole bread, Just picked vine ripened tomatoes(yum,yum,yum), Almost fresh mozzarella & herbs. Delicious:) What's cooking? Jalapenos or Penaponyas as the Little Chef likes to call them. Goal: Be able to pull out peppers at a moments notice and stuff with cheese to broil. Washed,Sliced in half, Seeded (that's were the heats at- so keep a couple in if you like it hot), Place on parchment paper. Here they have baked at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. Placed on cool pan to be frozen. Apx 2 hours. Then bag and pop in freezer to pull out. When you pull them out, pop them in to bake for 5 to 7 minutes at 400 degrees. Take out, stuff as desired. Broil until bubbly. Yum!!! You can also wash and freezer them whole to put in meals or for fresh salsa. I'm going to roast a couple with then put in freezer for later use. What else? 14 pints of Salsa! The tomatoes are toooo good! I'll can them tonight or tomorrow. Last, but not least... Dehydrating apples. We had abou...

Good Afternoon! I just wanted to Thank my Lord publicly for the great bounty He is supplying for our household. All this for $10! What a wonderful blessing. Oh, here's one of that cute little chef! What will she make today? PB& Apples! Gotta run...I'm making plum and raspberry jams. What are you up to today? Leave some love if you have a moment. Hope to get a new camera with some good deals coming in the next couple of months.