Country Entertainments

 Hello dear friends!  Hope today finds you all hail and hearty!  Well, spring is here, albeit, Michigan spring is very finicky.  One day it can be in the mid-50s and the next day we have snow.  I can't wait until we have true warmer weather because sitting around all winter is making me fluffy. Ha! I really need to be able to get out and work in the garden and firm up my muscles.  Doesn't help that I spent the last month just lying about trying not to hurt.  But as neighbor Connie says, "It is what it is.".

The first weekend of March was maple syrup weekend and we enjoyed visiting the local maple sugaring shack.

The steam from the boiling sap was heavenly.  We had a nice conversation with the people that owned it. And we bought a pint of syrup from them, also.  It's important to us to support local businesses.  Our maple syruping is coming along splendidly.  The irratic temperatures have been a real boon for collecting sap. Here's the first of our syrup all canned and ready for the shelves:

We have more coming!  It's a long way from meeting all of our sugar needs, but every bit counts! What a pleasure it is to forage for food.  Why, it's almost like manna from heaven!

The second weekend of March we went to an estate sale in a nearby village we had never explored before.  Most of their items were what I call rusty greasy junk, but they had some beautiful pieces of Victorian furniture in excellent condition for very good prices, some pretty wicker porch furniture and an intriguing Victorian bronze mantle clock with the most extraordinary mermaids on the sides. None of which I bought.  But I did buy a Wedgewood teapot with eight matching teacups and saucers for the grand sum of $20!  Not that I needed it. As you can see Ihave plenty of china:

The teapot I bought is the white one on the far right corner. By the way, I took all my china down and gave it a good wash the other day.  The first job in Spring cleaning.  Oh my!  The cobwebs in this house! Anyways, the teapot isn't really my style, I prefer things a lot older, but it was such a good buy, I'll use it for a season or two, then donate the set to a local thrift store that employs disabled people.  They have a little "antique" shop area in their store.

Since the Mennonite store was near the estate sale, we stopped by and bought ourselves a coffee.  They brew the best coffee and it's only a dollar with free refills.  And we bought a large head of cabbage for ninety-nine cents, which we used to make this inexpensive meal to offset my "antique" expenditure:

Cabbage Frittata 

This is our take on a Korean street sandwich.  We make ours into a frittata since Ran can't eat bread.

Finely diced cabbage

Shredded carrots

Finely diced onions (or anything in the onion family)

a teaspoon of sugar (the street vendors use a lot more but a teaspoon is enough)

half a dozen eggs

 a tablespoon of mayo and a tablespoon of ketchup combined

and of course, a wee bit of fat or oil, whatever is your preference to fry it in

The proportions of vegetables is whatever you like, enough to fit in (heaping)  the frying pan you are using.

Heat the oil/fat until hot and saute the vegetables until the are translucent and starting too crisp.  Stir in the beaten eggs and continue to stir until the eggs are cooked through.  We like to finish it off by putting the frying pan into a hot oven.  Take from the heat and sprinkle with sugar. Serve with the ketchup/mayo sauce.  Of course you can cut into squares and serve between two pieces of toast if you desire. BTW, our independently-owned grocery store sells eggs for $2.99 a dozen, making them affordable again.  Bless free enterprise!  A local egg farmer undercut  the prices of the large commercial ones.  I suspect  there's a bit of price-gouging in the high costs of eggs these days.   There's enough cabbage left over to make a nice bowl of coleslaw for the guys (I can't eat raw cabbage because of my thyroid) so we'll have another cheap-to-us meal of walleye and coleslaw.

This coming weekend we will attend a benefit for our Amish neighbors. They are having a luncheon, auction, and bake sale to raise money for their school.  And just down the road the Mennonite store is holding their customer appreciation day (free coffee and donuts) and some very good prices  on meat and butter.  So we will stock up.  So that is how we country bumpkins keep ourselves entertained.  Exciting isn't it? Ha!

Soon we won't have any need for outside entertainments, as gardening season will be upon us.  Ran started some of our seeds; tomatoes, peppers, onions, and herbs, this week.  And there's spring cleaning.  In between times, I fill what minutes I can snatch with knitting, sewing and cross stitching.  I'm making progress on that sampler now that I don't have to make a color change every two stitches.  I'm also making a Holly Hobbie inspired charm quilt (small) for the back of the loveseat.  The top came together quickly, but the quilting (ugh!) is really gobbling up my free time. I'm also knitting a pair of socks in a pretty (for me) colourway called Dried Herbs.  I love earthy colors and there's certainly nothing earthier than dried herbs. The socks could knit up pretty quickly if I just dedicated my time to them, but I've spread myself pretty thinly with these projects.  Next month I'll choose quick-to-finish projects.  And please remind me NO MORE QULTS!

So you see, life here at Sweet briar cottage is pretty sweet, figuratively and literally.  I found this quote the other day and it pretty much sums up our philosophy on life:

To live content with small means ~ to seek elegance  rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion, to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich~ to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly, to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart ~ to bear all cheerfully ~do all bravely, await occassions ~ never hurry: in a word, to let the spiritual,  unbidden  and unconscious, grow up through the common. This is to be my symphony.

~William Ellery Channing~

Well, That's it for this week.  Please drop me a comment and tell me what you are doing for entertainment this month.  Or just to  say "hello!". I hope this week will be a lovely and joyful one for you all!

Hugs

Jane

Living Below Our Means

 Hello dear friends!  Firstly, I want to thank all of you that sent me get-well wishes.  I am getting better, but it is going a lot slower than I had hoped.  I am one of those sorts of people that thinks I can by  force of will to get better.  Nope. Ha! BTW, I went to the emergency room with an extreme pain in my side and thought perhaps it was my gallbladder or appendix.  I was concerned because my son had appendicitis and   his pain wasn't in the usual place. By the time the doctors figured it out, it started to turn to gangrene. So I thought I should get it checked out.  So off to the hospital I went.  After blood tests and a CT scan, they couldn't find anything wrong with me, and since they didn't have any diagnosis, they couldn't give me anything for the pain.  So I came home and while I was getting undressed I noticed a rash. Yep, shingles!  My mother told me I never had the chickenpox so I thought I was immune to them and came as quite a surprise.  The pain I was experiencing was nerve pain. If they only would have given me a physical exam they might have discovered it, but modern medicine is quick to use all their diagnostics instead of doing good old-fashioned doctoring.  A month later I'm still suffering from nerve pain, but it is lessening and I have my good days and my bad days.  I don't intend on letting the pain stop me from getting what I need and want to get done. Just have to work through it.   Anyhow....

Still, I managed to get some things done.  I managed to meet my goal of finishing the bottom half of a Beidermeier-style sampler I'm stitching.

The top should go much more quickly than the bottom half and I hope to finish it by the beginning of summer.  Just in time to hunt down a frame for it at a garage sale.  What sort of frame do you think would look good with it?

I also finished knitting this fischu.  

BTW, that is not a cobweb on the bottom left-hand corner, it's just some strands of my hair when I bent over to take the picture.  Some people are so critical!  My hair gets into everything and I'm sure I have knitted quite a few strands into my work over the years.    

Late Winter Jobs

February is a big month for canning here.  Foods that are root cellared must be canned before they spoil, so we canned potatoes and winter squashes.  We grew a lot of potatoes this past year.  I also canned all the organic grass-fed beef that I wrote about in an earlier post.  And we canned some dried beans.  Annieh asked if I would explain how to can, but really there isn't more than I can add to what is already written in a good canning book, such as Ball's Blue book, and by studying the manual that comes with your pressure canner.  For canning beans, I can them exactly (except I can mine at 10 pounds of pressure) as this lady does on YouTube.  She is very knowledgeable about canning and I would recommend her channel to anyone that wants to learn how to can. Always check the information you are given on any blog or channel with the Blue Book or a canning book written by an extension office.  There's a lot of very bad advice out there.  Unfortunately, a lot of people are attracted to slick looking blogs and channels, rather than those that are written by actual knowledgeable  and experienced people.  BTW, Ran and Jamie were a major help to me in canning.  They really could have done it themselves, but lack the confidence, I guess.  Ran even made up a batch of cranberry catsup (recipe in the Ball Blue Book) and all I needed to do was to fill the jars.   More things cleaned out of my freezer!  We are getting ready for the fishing season.

The snow is melting quickly and we have begun maple sugaring.  I wrote about how we do small-scale processing here.

Since I didn't feel much like leaving home this past month and the weather wasn't cooperating anyhow, Jamie spent his down-time organizing and inventorying our pantry.  Such a big job!  I can truly say that we are well-stocked.  Taking inventory is a major aid in keeping a budget.  Ran is one for always wanting to buy more, but when he saw our stock list, he was finally convinced we didn't need to buy any more.  We really only need to spend a few dollars a month on groceries.  We prefer to eat our own fruits and vegetables that we either root cellar, freeze, dehydrate or can, rather than eat fresh fruits and vegetables from the stores during the winter.  We keep a jar of seeds sprouting during the winter to get our green leafies, as well as our frozen spinach, broccoli and nettles. We start lettuce in cold frames and we collect dandelion greens and nettles as soon as they show up on the lawn.  Lettuce, kale and spinach can grow late into the fall, so really there's only a few months when we don't have "fresh" fruits and vegetables.  My ancestors have lived like this for centuries and they were a long-lived bunch, most living into their late 80s and 90s and quite a few  centenarians.  So I guess it works for us.  

Ran has also started our onion seeds and sweet potato slips.  It is too early to start any other seeds, as our last frost date is in late May. 

Live Well Below Your Means

Ran and I sat down and made a bare bones budget.  We really don't enjoy spending money just for the fun of it.  It is just the way we are.  Some people might look askance at some of the things we do, such as we only have the minimal Medicare (no cost to us that you are required to take when you turn 65) that only covers hospitalization and hospice.  We simply do not believe in running to the doctor for every little thing.  Last month I made a trip to the emergency room (why does every emergency happen on the weekend?) Anyway, I had a CT scan and blood work.  The bill ended up being less than a few months of the "extra" supplements.  We have a fund for those sorts of things.  And the hospital and labs always give us a discount because we pay promptly and they don't have to file all the paperwork.  If we don't use the funds, which we rarely do, the money is put into savings.  When the doctor told us we needed to start coming in twice a year, because of our age, we told him no.  Ditto for the dentist.  When I see the sackful of medications the average oldster is using, I really question modern medicine.  A long time ago, the doctor said my cholesterol was getting up into the danger zone and suggested I might need medication.  I went home and started exercising more and eating more vegan meals.  Never had a problem with cholesterol since. Good food from the good earth grown by ourselves benefits our bodies, much more than anything the doctor has ever prescribed.  Our philosophy is to eat what the Good Lord has provided for us.  

We don't spend money on trips, dining out, or expensive hobbies  I am content to sew, knit  and embroider from supplies I find at thrift stores and not to be boastful, I think I make as nice of things as people that spend hundreds of dollars on their hobbies.  As a matter of fact, I find it a fun challenge to use "found" supplies rather than go out and buy precisely what the project calls for.  We are content to travel only within our county and the surrounding ones.  Our entertainment is going to church rummage and bake sales and an occasional church supper.  In the summer we like to stop at garage sales on our monthly trip to do our grocery shopping.  If an estate sale is nearby, we like to go just to poke about, but we do not feel the need to buy anything. We are content to garden and sit outside and listen to the birds.  We buy DVDs from the thrift store and have our favorite series that we watch sometimes for entertainment. There are some interesting channels on YouTube also.  No need for cable TV. 

We save on heating by using our wood stove.  We do have a natural gas fired boiler for our hot water and it supplements our wood heat also.  The highest bill we have ever had is $75, but in the warmer months it usually runs us $25.  Every three years we buy a truckload of wood which runs around $1000.  Our electric bill averages about $65 a month.  We do not have a lot of electronics.  We don't keep our house lit up like a Christmas tree at night.  

Our water bill is $100 a month, but includes sewer and trash pick-up. Our property taxes are low because our home is small and not grand.  It's about $1200 a year, but we just got a tax assessment and it is going up 20% this year.  And then there's house insurance and car insurance (Michigan has the highest car insurance rates in the country) and license plates and all those other little taxes that they tax us to death for, (sigh), no one is ever truly free are they?  Groceries and medical funds, etc. Anyway this is a long-winded way of saying that we figured that our bare-bones budget adds up to $950 a month that we could live on.  And that is what we intend to live on this year.  We intend to live well, well beneath our means.  If all this seems like misery to you, I can assure you that we are truly content We live such a blessed life!

11 And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you;12 That ye may walk honestly toward them that are without, and that ye may have lack of nothing.

1Thessalonians 4: 11-12

I'm sharing this with you to be an encouragement.  Don't let others tell you how to run your life.  If you like spending money and can afford it, do it.  If you enjoy extreme thriftiness ( someone once commented that they thought that term was an insult) enjoy it.  Why do people feel the need to follow the crowd?  Wouldn't it be a boring world if everyone thought the same?  BTW, sorry about the font!  Professional blogger, I am not.  If these sorts of things bother you, please feel free to go elsewhere.  Well, I hope this long post makes up for my absences in February.   So as we bid adieu  to winter and March toward spring, I hope your days are pleasant and filled with contentment and joy.  It really was a beautiful winter.

Hope to see you soon!

Hugs

Jane

I Love Winter Most of All

 Hello dear friends!  Hope you all are staying warm and safe.  Today the sun came out!  Hurrah!  We are having snow squalls with it, but that is winter.  

This is the break wall.  Only one lone ice fisherman is brave enough to face the wind these days.

He must really love to fish!  It's warming up today and the thermometer has even registered in the teens (Fahrenheit)! The lowest we've had so far has been around -5F with wind chills in the -20s, but that is winter.  Winter is supposed to be cold.  I feel like I'm alone in my opinion, but I love winter. It's my favorite season. I even think the cold is healthy for you.  Have you ever noticed how healthy the Scandinavian people are? Although I have no medical proof of it, I believe that breathing in all the cold crisp air is healthy for the lungs.  Growing up I had asthma quite severely, but I was still allowed to play outside in the winter (I grew up much farther north than where I live now) and it seemed the more I played in the cold the stronger my lungs became.  Anyway, I love winter and even was bemoaning the fact that it is flying by so quickly.

Winter is my season of "slow living".  I guess slow living has become quite a trendy thing these days.  Or was trendy, I should say, I just read something the other day that it is going out of style.  How can someone's lifestyle go out of style?  Am I supposed to change and start fretting about things and begin going places just to keep up with the trends?  This entire idea about "aesthetics " is just so ridiculous.  I've been living the cottage-style, slow living lifestyle for fifty years and I'm not about to change just because it becomes unfashionable.  To me slow living means being a homebody.  I like to make my home comfortable for my family and take time to really enjoy being with them.  I do not believe in being busy for busyness' sake. Our home still gets cleaned and business taken care of, I just don't think I need to fill every waking moment with doing "something".

Of course, that's easy for me to say, as I really don't need to go out unless I want to, I'm content just to do a little cleaning, do a little baking and sit by the fireside and do a little dreaming. 

I was thinking about the Bible story of Mary and Martha the other day.  I never really could understand it.  I always looked at it from the perspective that Mary was shirking her duties and poor Martha was left holding the bag.  But then I realized that Mary was just living "in-the-moment" as the expression goes these days.  Just being still and listening to her Savior.  Martha was so busy trying to earn favor by her deeds and keeping busy that she missed the entire point.  That is what winter is to me, my time to be still and hear my Savior's voice.  In spring there's planting to keep me busy and summer is filled with harvesting and preserving.  Winter is my time to "Be still and know that I am God" Psalm 46:10.

Not that I just sit like a bump on the log all day long!  I still get plenty done.  I finished this huge woolen quilt this month:

I've made a few of these woolen patchwork quilts, but this is the largest one and hopefully the last one.  It was so large that we had to remove all the furniture from the dining room to lay out the backing and batting and to tie it.  I think it is queen size, so I guess that illustrates how small our home is. Ha! Plenty of my old woolen skirts and blazers went into it.  As I get older I can't tolerate wool as well as I did when younger.  But I hated to just get rid of them, so this was a good project to use them up.  I used the last of my down blankets for batting and a flannel sheet from the thrift store for the backing so the total cost was about one dollar.  And it keeps us very warm.  I call it Holly Hobbie meets Ralph Lauren  style as many of the skirts were RL brand.  

Since we had all the furniture from the dining room removed, I took the opportunity to do a bit of rearranging and brought the chimney cupboard into the back wood stove room.  We've been working to make this room a more cozy spot since we winter there.  It is sort of a catchall room of cast-offs.  I also found this cute little lamp at the thrift store for the backroom.

Isn't it cute?  Only four dollars! I had the vintage lampshade that fit it perfectly.I wish they'd start making cute lampshades like that again. BTW, the calendar behind it was free from my Amish store.  It gives me old-timey general store vibes.

Oh!  And speaking of thrift stores, I went looking for a New English translation Bible (sometimes I just want to read the Bible in plain English), which I found, and I also found this lovely book:

The New Kitchen Garden by Anna Pavord.  It's one of those beautifully styled books that they published in the 1990s.  The made the loveliest books then. Anyway, it is a wonderful book and some wonderful layouts for gardens, particularly a layout for a patio style garden for those of you that only have a terrace or patio to garden on.  It sort of reminds me of John Seymour's Self-Sufficient Gardener, which is my favorite gardening book.  

And speaking of gardening my Select Seeds catalog arrived today.  Do you  get this catalog?  Oh my!  The absolutely most beautiful varieties of flowers!  I always make a list of about a gazillion flowers I want to grow.  Who could resist?  If only I didn't have to grow food, my entire backyard would be beautiful heirloom flowers. Oh well! If wishes were horses all men would ride!

Good Intentions

Well we all know which road those are paved upon!  I had every bit of a good intention to list all my menus to show you how thriftily we are grocery-wise, but you know what? This month we haven't been thrifty at all.  We've been trying to get our pantries and freezers eaten down, so we have probably eaten more meat than ever. Usually our winter meals consist of making a big batch of soup and eating that for a few days then a batch of something like a pot of rice with beans and vegetables, and some kind of sauce served on a tortilla with cheese.  This week it was rice with white beans, carrots (it's always carrots), broccoli and leeks with chermoula sauce and some mystery  leftover cheese.  Tasted just like lamb without the price of lamb.

Baking

I bought dates before Christmas but didn't get around to  using them, so no time like the present!  Been experimenting with wheat-less baking and I made these bars with one of those wheat substitute flours, but here is the recipe as it is written in the old receipts book.

Date Squares

Crumb layer:

1 1/4 C. flour

1 1/2 C. oats

1 C. brown sugar, packed

1 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1 C. butter

Put all the dry ingredients into a bowl.  Cut in the butter until the mixture is crumbly.  Press 2/3 rds of mixture into a 9 X 9 inch greased pan

Filling:

1/2 lb. dates, pitted and cut up

1/2 C. sugar

2/3 C. water

Combine in a saucepan.  Bring to a boil and then simmer until mixture becomes mushy.

Pt all of the date mixture over the bottom layer of crumbs.  Crumble the remaining crumbs over top. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes until golden brown.

I like to make a glaze of powdered sugar and orange juice and pour over the warm bars.  Allow to cool completely before cutting into squares.

Well. other than that, I've been canning potatoes this week.  Potatoes are a chore.  I tried a new canning recipe to make herbed potatoes.  You use chicken broth instead of water and add your favorite herbs to the jars.  I used rosemary, parsley a bit of thyme and a bit of savory. And salt.  Can't tell you how they taste but they look good

Well, I rambled on here long enough.  Been looking at all the analyticals and it is hard to tell what you all want me to write about.  One post that is viewed a lot might be one that is strictly about thriftiness, then another that is really about nothing is just as popular. So just let me know what you'd like to see on this blog and I'll try to accommodate you.

Hugs

Jane

Last Business of 2024

 Hello dear friends!  Happy New Year in a day advance!  Ha!  Whatever AI they have pre-loaded onto the computer just sent me a message asking if I wanted help with writing correctly.  It couldn't make sense of that second sentence.  You see, I write the way I talk, seems more personal to me, but the AI is determined to make me write in proper king's English.  I grew up in a little German community where many people spoke German as their primary language, they even held a weekly church service in the language.  My father's family is Pennsylvania Dutch.  So those two factors figure into how I form my sentences.  For instance (this is an extreme example, I don't think I've ever gone this far), most people would say, " I am going to the store.". But I would say, "To the store, I am going.".  It doesn't help that Ran is only a second generation American (his grandfather emigrated from Berlin) and speaks in much the same manner.  I thought it was humorous that AI disapproves of my writing.  Even artificial people are critics these days. Ha!

Anyway, it was a pretty Christmas and I got my snow!  It's all melted now.  We really don't celebrate Christmas, except to ponder upon its meaning, but it still was important for me to have snow this time of the year.  

Do you make New Year's resolutions?  Some people are resolute in not making them, which I find amusing.  Resolutions are just setting a goal, after all.  We should all set goals for ourselves, or we'd just be wandering about aimlessly.  My goal for the new year is to "just do better"  than the last, whether it is eating healthier, exercising more, studying  or working harder.  There's always room for improvement.

One thing I want to get back to is my extreme thriftiness.  Last year we had quite a boost in our income and I started to slack off a bit on my economy. So this year, it's back to the old nose to the grindstone. If you have read this blog for any amount of time, you know one of my strategies for living cheaply is to buy low and in bulk.  Our fiscal year begins when we have harvested the last bits from the garden.  Then I have a good study of my pantry and see what needs to be purchased for the coming year.  A few posts back I wrote about my adventure in deer carrots and canning turkey when it went on sale in November.  That was ten dollars that stretched pretty far at stocking the pantry. Then a few weeks ago I was checking out the reduced for quick sale meat at our local Walmart. And I found organic grass-fed beef for four dollars a pound!  I quickly snatched up ten pounds of that, you can be assured! So for forty dollars, I have enough beef for the coming year. We rarely eat beef.  So now I'm up to fifty dollars of my food budget for the coming year.  Next, we stopped at our local Amish bulk food store and purchased ten pounds of Irish grass-fed butter for thirty-six dollars.  Ten pounds of butter should suffice for a year, as we rarely bake since we discovered Ran is allergic to wheat.  So that brings my tally to eighty-six dollars.  I plan to make myself accountable by writing about my grocery purchases and menus in the coming year.  I really don't see the need to purchase much else; we have plenty of flour, sugar and coffee and the pantry is stocked with all those jars of canned goods.  About all I plan to  buy is some citrus and milk for one spoiled cat.  Oh!  I even have a good supply of milk canned (unfortunately Blackie turns up his nose at canned milk)!  Our neighbor Ed works at a food pantry and about a month ago he gave me several gallons as he was trying to get rid of forty gallons of milk that was left behind before it spoiled.  I canned it up in quart jars and ended up with a dozen quarts.  We are not milk drinkers, but once or twice a month we enjoy some cornstarch pudding.  And instead of buying those "cream of" soups I make a basic white sauce.  So that was a real boon to our economy.  Another acquaintance said that I could have all the walnuts I cared to rake from her front yard.  Ran spent some of the colder days cracking and shelling them, which we froze.  Another blessing.  And of course, Ran is still catching fish so our freezer is stocked with walleye and I have plenty of the salmon and pike he caught last spring canned and on the shelf.  If it weren't for Blackie being so spoiled and expecting his daily milk and our love of all things  citrus, I probably wouldn't need to spend another penny this year.  But of course you know I will!  As a matter of fact, I plan on buying ten pounds of cheese next time I'm near the Amish bulk food store.  Their supplier of cheese ends and pieces has returned and cheese is only two dollars a pound.  We love cheese!

BOOKS

Rose asked a while back if I had any book suggestions.  Here are some that I have found to be helpful on the road to self-sufficiency.:

First is Mama's Home Remedies by Svetlana Konnikova.  This book is chock-a-block full of common sense  and old wives tales remedies all rolled up in a delightful read.  So many of those herbal remedies books are filled with useless information.  I don't grow black cumin or ginkgo balboa in my herb garden, do you?  This book is just how to live healthier without all that silliness.

The Best Natural Homemade Soaps by Mar Gomez.  Or any good basic soap making book should be on your shelf if you are interested in self-sufficiency.

Farm Journal's Country Cookbook.  Probably the only cookbook you would ever need.  Just a good basic cookbook without a lot of expensive and silly ingredients.

Sewing Made Easy by Dorothy Sara.  Another one of those no-nonsense books.  The type that should be on everyone's bookshelf even if you have no desire to sew your own clothes, it is important to know how to mend clothes.

Saving Seeds by Marc Rogers.  Yet another valuable book on how to save your seeds from year to year.  Saves a lot of money.

The Return of the Puritans by Patricia O. Brooks.  This history book gives you a pretty good idea of how we got to where we are today as a country.  I found it fascinating and while the book is dated, its information is still valid today.

Stocking Up by the Rodale Press.  Everything you need to know about canning, root cellaring and dehydrating.

So Easy to Preserve by the Cooperative Extension  of the University of Georgia. This is the canning book I use.

Dressing Edwardian

I mentioned that I enjoy dressing in the Edwardian style and Cathy was curious about that, so here is a brief lesson, although not historically accurate, on how I dress Edwardian.  First let me say, all my life I tried to fit in, but I always felt that I was just play-acting and wasn't being true to myself.  For some reason, I was just drawn to this style since I was a little girl. I didn't want to embarrass my sons by being the "strange mom in the old-fashioned clothes", so I waited until they had flown the coop before I started introducing the world to the real me. Ha!  Since most of social interactions are with Amish and Mennonite people, who know a thing or two about being different, it was quite an easy transition for me to make.  The neighbors just accept me as being a tad bit eccentric.  About the only time I dress in what is considered "normal" attire is when I am going to the big city and want to blend in for safety reasons.  Here's my basic wardrobe:

Sorry it's not a better picture but it has been as dark as a tomb here the past couple weeks.  On the far right I have the three basic skirts I wear; a cream corduroy with lots of pintucks and ruffles, a brown ankle length "walking skirt" and a denim prairie skirt.  

Next to the skirts are my petticoats.  A genuine Edwardian one that I purchased at an estate sale for a dollar.  It was on a rack of kid's costumes. And the second one is a flannel one that I sewed using a Folkwear patterns, using fabric from a much too large nightgown. 

I were sweater tights under them.

For blouses I always look for something that either has pintucks or a high ruffled neck.  If you can't find any such blouses, you can always make one.  Here's a post on how I convert a regular blouse into an Edwardian one.  I always button my blouses all the way to the top button and where a cameo brooch or some other Edwardian looking bar brooch.

Over the years I have curated quite a wonderful collection of cardigans.  Just the basic style that has never been in fashion, but never really out.  I look for manufacturers' names like Woolrich, Pendelton and Cambridge Dry Goods.  They must be 100% wool.  Another hint is to look for sweaters that say they are "hand-framed" and made in Hong Kong.  Those are the the best quality.  Irish made sweaters are good too.  Just good quality classic sweaters.  On the bottom left hand corner is a sweater I knit from an Edwardian pattern. When it is really cold, I often top these with a hand-knit sontag or shawl.

For accessories I always try to wear a bit of lace and my three go-to earrings are a pair of pearl drops, some button style pearl ones and a pair of onyx oval earrings.

So there you have it, a lesson on how to be eccentric just like me.  I seriously doubt anyone is going to take my advice, but I thought I'd humor you all. Dare to be the authentic you!

Well!  This has been a long post!  I hope you poured yourself a cup of coffee before you began reading.  Thank you all for being so supportive this past  year.  It really meant a lot to me.  May you all be blessed in the coming new year!

Hugs

Jane

 

A Very Nostalgic Christmas!

 Hello dear friends!  Keeping warm?  We keep going from snowy days and spring-like days.  Today it's cold, about sixteen degrees, and windy, so I thought it would be a good day to sit here by the fire and write a post.

And yes, I did put out my vintage bottle brush trees on our first snow day, but I didn't have room for my reindeer herd this year.  And I did listen to Snowfall but not by Doris, instead by Tony Bennett (his rendition was not so good).

Snow always makes me nostalgic for Christmases of the past.  This year I decided to be kind to myself and just keep things simple.  I've been reliving my youth. I even watched a rerun of a Christmas soap opera episode (Ryan's Hope).  Funny that such a thing would bring me so much pleasure, but I don't take myself too seriously. Gosh!  Remember when people got dressed up just to go to a relative's home for a Christmas party?  I've been trying to think when was the last time I needed an evening gown, or any sort of dressy clothes for that matter.  Does anyone wear them anymore, except for being a bridesmaid or a mother of the bride or groom? 

Anyway, my trip down memory lane started when I discovered a skein of red and green Kresge brand yarn at the thrift store.  How many mittens, scarves and slippers have I knitted with that back in the 60s?  I had to sit right down and knit myself a pair of Christmas slippers.

It's not a very good picture.  It's hard to take a picture of one's own feet.  I used a knitting pattern from a vintage booklet, but I would have preferred to use the pattern I wrote about here.  These slip around on my feet too much.  Oh well!  They are fun to wear during the month of December.

Another treasure I uncovered was an apron made from the old Cranston Christmas  fabric that was so popular in the seventies and eighties.  What was even more remarkable was that I had a piece of the companion print in my stash!  Just enough  fabric to be repurposed into making a small charm quilt for the back of the loveseat. I edged it with some red jumbo rickrack (another thrift store find) to give it a sort of vintage postcard look.

I love those old fabrics that came in flat packs and were sold at the Ben Franklins and Woolworths.  How much  fun it was to choose some for an apron to make for mother or grandma. We were busy making a lot of gifts back when.  Christmas consisted of making presents and practice for plays and choir at church and school, with a good bit of ice skating and caroling thrown in for good measure.  It was a busy, happy time.

  BTW, see that little needlepoint pillow?  I picked up the unfinished piece at a garage sale probably a decade ago with the intention of "doing something" with it.   One of my weaknesses is that I'm always adopting other's orphan projects.  Well anyway, I finally got around to making it into a pillow.  Must have taken me about one-half hour.  Should  have done it years ago.

I've kept gift-giving simple this year.  The only cookie I baked was our traditional eggnog logs and a small tin of fudge , those, along with several pounds of coffee (we are all major coffee drinkers) and a jigsaw puzzle were packaged and sent off to the children and grandchildren before we could be tempted by the goodies.

Recipe

One of my fondest Christmas memories was how excited my dad would get when the  dime store got their first shipment of Christmas candy in.  My sister Suzy worked there and would excitedly announce to my father that the candy had arrived.  Oh, the many little white bags of various goodies he'd come home with; maple drops, divinity, chocolate stars and my favorite, seafoam! (Doesn't candy taste better when it is scooped into little white bags at a candy counter rather than coming in a package?) It's one of those things that is going the way of snow chains and skating on the pond, I'm afraid.  I did find some at a Polish market, but they wanted something like $20 a pound for it!  I might be nostalgic for the past, but not that much!  I  remembered that I used to make my own and had the recipe "somewhere".  Well, the old receipt book to the rescue again!  The receipt book is  my own little hard-times cookbook. It is getting so old that many of the recipes are fading into oblivion.  One of the reasons I write this blog is to record all those old recipes before they vanish from the pages forever.  So  anyway, here's the  recipe.  

Seafoam Candy

1 C. sugar

1C. corn syrup

1 Tbsp. cider vinegar

 Using a heavy large pot, boil until mixture reaches the hard crack stage on a candy thermometer (I use the old-fashioned method of dropping a bit into a cup of cold water, it should form a hard ball immediately when dropped into the water.

Immediately remove from heat and stir in:

1 Tbsp. baking soda

Mixture will foam and expand (that's why you need a bigger pot then you may think).

Working quickly, stir in the baking soda until combined and pour immediately into a buttered loaf pan.  Allow to cool and turn out your "loaf" onto a cutting board and break into pieces.

Melt two packages of chocolate chips in a double boiler and dip the pieces.  With the leftover chocolate I stir in nuts or coconut and drop onto waxed paper. Or spread the remaining chocolate on some waxed paper, allow to cool and break it into chunks to be used for chocolate chunk cookies at a later date.

This is so much better than the kind you get in the stores.  It melts in your mouth and almost tastes buttery.

So that's what I've been up to since I last wrote.  Many days you will find me sitting before the fire listening to old Christmas instrumentals and knitting or stitching.  I only leave the house  one day out of the week and that is just to the neighboring town to buy milk for Blackie our cat (he's very spoiled) and tangerines.  Everything I could want is contained in my own little dear home. Choose everyday to take joy dear friends!

Hugs

Jane

Elemental Things

 

I have found such joy in simple things; A plain clean room, a nut-brown loaf of bread, a cup of milk, a kettle as it sings, the shelter of a room above my head, and a leaf-laced square along the floor, where yellow sunlight glimmers through the door.

I have found such  joy in things that fill my quiet days; a  curtain's blowing grace, a potted plant upon my windowsill,  a rose, fresh-cut and placed within a vase, a table cleared, a lamp beside a chair, and books I  long have loved beside me there.

Oh, I have found such a joys I wish I might tell every human that goes seeking far for some elusive, feverish delight, that very close to home those great joys are the elemental things ~ Old as the race, yet never through the ages, commonplace~

Grace Noll Crowell

Hello dear friends!  So sorry it has been a while since my last post.  Just not much going  on in my neck of the woods.  The weather has finally begun to feel quite autumnal, indeed we have even witnessed a bit of snow.  Thursday we went to an estate sale and it was snowing while we hunted for treasures in the outbuildings.  Put us in a jolly mood!  And I found three things on my antiques wish list; a rush lamp, an ovoid stoneware jug and a true antique wooden trencher, all pictured above. My wish list is whittling down. Such a fun sale and the prices were amazing.  I'd much rather spend my money on antiques than dining out or going on vacations.  Or even buying "fancy" groceries. Since Ran and I are true homebodies, it is important to us to have our home decorated the way we enjoy.Anyway, the snow put Ran in the holiday spirit, so  today he fashioned us a wreath from our grapevines. (They had to be pruned anyway)

Once we begin to have snow, I do not care to look at Fall decor, so I know it may seem early to some, (the bah-humbug type, Ha!) but we had fun making it.  I also baked my Christmas cake, as it must "ripen" in the freezer for a month to bring out the best flavor.  For over half a century Ran and I have been sharing a piece of this cake in the evening during the month of December.  When we were young we shared our dreams, now that we are old we share our memories.  So I was  disappointed when we discovered that Ran was allergic to wheat a month ago. No more pumpkin pies and stuffing at Thanksgiving, no more Christmas cookies or our cake at Christmas.  I know it may sound like a small and insignificant thing to most, but our little fruitcake  ritual was the last vestige of our Christmas traditions, we have given up everything else to accommodate and appease others, so I was deeply saddened when this final tradition would have to go too.  Fortunately I discovered a wheat substitute so Ran can still have his cake and eat it too.  BTW, those flour substitutes are good for some things, but they make the worst yeast breads and pie crusts.  

Anyway, the Christmas cactus thinks it's time to start thinking about the holidays also.

This is my pretty white one.  About a decade ago, Ran asked me what I wanted for Christmas and I told him I wanted a white Christmas cactus, thinking that should be a simple request. Well, little did I know at the time they were as scarce as hen's teeth.  He and our son Scott, scoured every department store and florist in the state of Wisconsin looking for one.  It was quite a hunt. Ha!  Now I can find them at Aldi's every December, right by the check-out.  So this one is a special one to me.  It almost died this year, but a small frond managed to hang on, I am so glad for that.  It is very treasured.

THRIFT

For me, November signifies "the great turkey price hunt".  We do not celebrate Thanksgiving in November like "normal" people.  Our day of thanks giving is the day we gather in the last crop from our garden, then we have a nice meal and thank the Lord for providing for us for another year.  But I cannot resist a good bargain on turkey!  So every November I start scouring all the store ads for the cheapest turkey.  This year Meijers won hands down; thirty-three cents with an M-card.  I don't have any store cards but a lovely young woman offered to lend me hers.  I felt that this was dishonest, so I declined, but it was still thoughtful of her to offer it.  Anyway, it was forty-four cents without the card.  So for a little over four dollars I had a nice turkey, which I canned into nine pints.   I could have made the carcass into broth and canned that, but I was feeling lazy.  I was telling Ran the other day between the purchase of the carrots I wrote about in the last post and the turkey, I have stocked the pantry quite well for ten dollars.  Over forty pints of food and if I had made the broth and canned it, it would have been fifty.  People that complain about the high price of groceries do not know how to shop. Or where.

Unfortunately, I haven't found any bargains on cranberries this year.  Makes me glad I stocked up last year when they were eighty-nine cents a package.  I canned cranberry relish and catsup and froze several packages. One of my favorite things to do with cranberries is to make cranberry tea, which isn't really a tea but more of a hot punch. (I come from a family of tea drinkers, but I cannot abide tea) Anyways, drinking this "tea" makes me feel more sociable when I'm around tea-drinkers.

Cranberry Tea

7 C. water

1/2 pkg. fresh cranberries

1 C. sugar

juice of 1 orange and 1 lemon

pinch of cloves and a pinch of cinnamon

Boil all until cranberries burst and your tea becomes a pleasing red color.  Strain and enjoy.

This is so good when accompanied with a slice of warm gingerbread.  My one true weakness!

Well, that is it for this month!  Not the most exciting of posts, but then there's enough "excitement" in the world, I don't need to bring any more to anyone's doorstep.  To all my fellow Americans, I wish you all a happy Thanksgiving.  Let us rejoice in all that is good on that day and every day.  To all I wish you peace.

Hugs

Jane

Late October

 Hello dear friends!  Well!  We are finally having one of those cozy days I have been longing for.  Fall certainly is slow at arriving this year, but it is glorious!

This is the lane to our dear Amish friend's store.  There is no place like home!  I didn't expect Fall to be so beautiful this year with the drought and all, but it's turning out to be glorious.  Although I do believe the plants are confused; we have roses and honeysuckles blooming and the pussy willows have little gray "kittens", but we have also had a hard frost.  Truth be told, I wish the warmer weather would go away until next Spring, I am ready for the cozy season.

Which reminds me! We had a new wood stove installed this week.  Our old one had some cracked soapstone tiles and was getting pretty old, so we took the plunge and bought a new one.  By the time we factor in the costs for repairs to the old one and there's a tax rebate on the new one, we weren't saving much, so we thought it was wisest to just replace the old one while we were able. It's not as cute as the old one, but it is more efficient.  And the nicest thing about it is that it has a built-in hotplate.  Made sauerbraten on it today.  Yum!

Penny Wise

Every year we see those bags of "deer carrots" at our local gas stations.  Do they have "deer carrots" around you?  They are twenty-five pound bags of carrots that they sell to feed the deer.  The local commercial carrot farms bag up the carrots that are too big or have undesirable shapes that they can't sell commercially and sell the cheaply to folks that want to feed them to animals.  Well, I was always curious about their quality, so I took the plunge and spent six dollars on a bag.  Was I ever happy I did! They were beautiful carrots.  I canned up thirty-six pints of carrots (that's six pints for a dollar!) and had plenty for eating fresh.  Nothing at all wrong with them.  As a matter of fact, they were so good that Ran and I decided we won't grow our own carrots next year, as the seeds for our own cost about as much as a bag and we always have a frustrating time getting a good crop to grow. So next time you are filling your gas tank, check out the "deer carrots", you can save yourself a lot of money.  If you don't pressure can, you can always cut up and blanch the carrots and freeze them. 

There's always so many ways to save money on groceries.  It is the custom around here for the neighbors to put out excess produce from the gardens in a box by the curb with a "free'" sign.  I could have had all the grapes, plums and pears I could desire this year for no cost.  Not to mention zucchini. Ha!  There's always zucchini!

When I was younger, there was a dear old lady that allowed me to glean her tomatoes fields, she grew them commercially.  I could gather as many tomatoes that were left behind after picking for $1.  I usually picked more than a bushel.  Bless that sweet little lady!  Little did she know those tomatoes kept the wolves from the door many a time. Many old farms have abandoned apple orchards and some kind people will allow others to pick them.  They might not be beautiful, but you can always cut off the bad spots and make applesauce with them.  A friend of a friend was all too happy to allow us to rake up the walnuts from her lawn last year.  It was a winter project for us to crack the nuts, but it yielded  several pounds of nuts, which we froze.  You know, nuts are a protein too.  Walnut croquettes are a clever way to use nuts as a main dish.  I need to look that recipe up again.

Sharon left a comment a few posts back that reminded me of another way we used to save on groceries back in the day and that was to form a sort of informal co-op with our friends and families.  You may not need or want twenty-five pounds of carrots (although I can't see why you wouldn't), but perhaps if you go in with a few family members and share the cost, you might enjoy having five pounds around.  I shop at the Mennonite bulk food store and buying in bulk saves so much money.  You can buy a big wheel of cheese for less than two dollars a pound.  Split among several family members it isn't so daunting.  They have twenty pound pails of peanut butter, split five ways, most families can handle four pounds.  The trick to forming an informal co-op is to work only with people you trust, that is why I suggest family members.  And have everyone chip in the money before shopping, no IOUs. We liked to have a little get-together and agree upon what is to be purchased, then designate a few people to go shopping.  After the shopping, everyone gets together and divvies up the haul.  It can be fun!

Baking

I kind of regret not taking up the neighbor on the offer of free pears.  With the drought our tree dropped most of its fruit before they ripened and the ones that clung on were on the smallish side.  I had such high hopes for my pears this year.  Well, what is that saying about counting your chickens before they hatch?  I had just enough to give a few to my grandson, Felix (he loves pears) and make this one small tart:

Pear Tart

1 pie crust

Pears, peeled and sliced, enough to fit into your tart pan

2 Tbls. flour

2 Tbls. butter

3/4 C. sugar

Fit pie crust into a tart pan. Place peeled and cored pears over top. Combine remaining ingredients until crumbly. Sprinkle over the pears.  Bake in a preheated 425 degree oven for 35 minute.

This has to be one of the simplest recipes ever.  But it is very good, especially when served with a dollop of cream atop.

Knitting

It's been my goal to use up all those single skeins of yarn that I purchased at the thrift stores for less than a dollar. I just cannot resist when I find a brand that I recognize or has some luxurious fiber  and its only fifty-cents.  Finding projects can be challenging though.  But I guess that's the fun of it.  I made these mittens:

from a skein of some Irish tweed wool.  They are ridiculously long! As you can see, the cuffs come up almost all the way to my elbows. No wind will be blowing up my sleeves!  I was intrigued by the color, "Irish Coffee".  I've never seen plum and turquoise Irish coffee have you?  And I think if I did, I wouldn't drink it!

Other things I have knitted from my one skein stash are a tea cozy and a cowl.

I also sewed an apron from a linen tablecloth that I purchased for fifty cents and remade a skirt that was unflattering into another apron. I wear a lot of aprons.  I have a sort of uniform: a long swirly skirt, blouse, tights, hand-knit socks, a classic styled wool cardigan or a hand-knit shawl, a petticoat with lots of lace, a headcovering, boots, and of course and apron to top it all off.  Whew!  No wonder I feel like I'm dragging around an extra ten pounds in the winter. Ha! No wonder people are always asking me if I'm Amish ( which I do not find offensive in the very least)  Do you have a "uniform"?

Well, Ran just came in with a cup of coffee and a piece of warm gingerbread for me.  Such a wonderful life I live in my little dollhouse of a home!  Many may say that there is nothing extraordinary about my life, but I beg to differ. I am blessed beyond measure.  I hope you are too!

Hugs

Jane