A Catch Up Post

 Hello dear friends!  It's been a long time since I have written that!  Well, aren't we in a crazy time in history?  The past few years I has taught me to just roll with the punches.  Since I last wrote a post, we have had quite a bit of "excitement"; struck by a solar flare that did thousands of dollars in damage (surge protectors didn't help), a fire, two tornadoes  touching down within 500 feet of our house, my husband breaking out in hives throughout his entire body that took months to go away.  AND that was just the minor things.  Even worse and stranger things happened that I dare not write about.  So you see, I have been preoccupied to say the least.  But the strangest thing is that all my live I have been a worrywart, but I have such a serenity these days, no news can phase me.  As the saying goes, I prepare for the worst and pray and hope for the best.  

FLOUR AND BREAD

Perhaps you have heard of Mike Adams, the Health Ranger?  He has some good health advice, but is a very excitable guy.  Just to say, that I take everything he says with a grain of salt.  Anyway, he and I might add many others are predicting major rises in the cost of wheat.  I think we can already see that in the rising prices of bread in the store..  So if I were you, I'd buy myself a 50 lb. bag of flour and learn to bake bread if you don't know how already.   We store ours in the food-grade buckets, but the last time we bought some, we didn't have one available, so we stuck the bag in one of those space saver bags (the ones that you suck the air out with your vacuum  cleaner that are made for storing clothes)  sealed it up and stowed it away in a lidded bin.   BTW, I just want to mention oven canning.  I hear a lot of people talking of oven canning their flour and beans.  To me it makes no sense, as right on the bag of flour it says to keep out of heat.  It's heat that releases the oils that make flour go rancid.  But I may be wrong.  Feel free to tell me otherwise.  We are a family of three adults and we usually don't need an entire loaf of bread so I've returned to make my refrigerator potato rolls again.  It's handy when we just want a few buns for dinner or sometimes a cinnamon roll for fikka.  It's truly the easiest bread recipe, with no kneading and the buns always turn out nice.  Sometimes I cut back a little on the sugar, but the recipe is good how it stands.  And you can use a bit here or there over several days. So that's my view on the wheat crisis.  Better to be safe than sorry.

SOME INTERESTING DISCOVERIES

I'm always working at saving money and finding ways to do it easier.  Here's a few things I discovered while I was away:

Last November turkeys were on sale for 39 cents a pound, so of course, I wasn't about to let that bargain pass me by.  Ended up canning around 40 pounds.  I used to roast the turkeys, remove the meat, make broth from the carcass, then can them.  But I was tired so I just threw two of the turkeys in my biggest roaster. poured water in half way up the side and let them stew in their own juices.  It made its own broth.  BTW, I never season my turkeys because I skim all the fat off the broth and use it for greasing my baking pans and even for baking.  It's used the same as shortening. As a matter of fact, people always ask me for the recipe for my brownies whenever I serve them, I've always been reluctant to tell them that the secret is chicken fat.  Guess the cat is out of the bag now!

Another discovery came via Three Rivers Homestead, a channel on YouTube.  Instead of browning  her hamburger in a frying pan before canning it, she just dumps it all in roasting pan and roasts it.  Again I don't season and save the grease (tallow) for greasing pans, frying onions, and for making soap.  Just strain it through several layers of cheesecloth.

Speaking of hamburger, remember when it was in the news that Taco Bell's meat wasn't "real" meat but an oat mixture?  That had me thinking.  I had about a half a pound of hamburger, so I add about two cups of oatmeal to it and some of my own taco seasoning. and let it simmer away in the pan for a few minutes.   And you know what?  It came out the exact same texture  as Taco Bell's meat and tasted like it too.  The guys thought it was great.  Sure is a meat stretcher!

KEEPING BUSY

For quite a while I have been working on using up what I already have.  I had lots of wool left over from making several woolen quilts but couldn't bear to just toss the remnants  so I braided this rug:

I will probably never braided another.  It's very hard on the knees and hips to sit on the floor and sew.

I challenged Ran to make me a cupboard from scrap wood he had in the garage.  He made me this:

We like primitves, which lends itself to those kind of constructions.  He enjoyed it so much, that he now goes around on the evening before garbage pick-up and salvages any  wood.  He's making me a chimney cupboard at the moment.  At the very least the extra wood goes into the outdoor firewood pile, or if untreated, the indoor one.

I've also made several scrap quilts, trying to use up the scrap bag.  It's getting down there!  Here's the latest one that I just finished quilting:

Since I make mine the old-fashioned way; making a template, tracing around them, hand cut and hand sewn and hand quilted.  I concentrate on smaller lap sized quilts.  

Well this has gone on for probably too long.  So I'll sign off from the old Zempel boarding house once again!

Hugs

Jane