July Came and Went!

 Hello dear friends!  Is it just me or does the time seem to be passing more quickly?  Hope you are all doing well and that you are enjoying your summer.  Several times I attempted to get a post out, but instead had to attend to gardens and preserving.  With this terrible drought I am amazed at how well the garden is doing.  Jamie and Ran spend about an hour every day watering it, but there is nothing like good old ozone-filled God-given rain for a garden.  Still, there are plenty of things flourishing.  We finally just had to pull the cucumbers and yellow squashes because I ran out of ideas for what to do with them.  There's only so many jars of relish and pickles a family can eat in a year!  And we had our favorite Summer Squash Casserole at least once a week for the last six weeks, and although we love it, we had enough for this year, thank you very much.  We also dehydrated plenty for soups this winter and made fritters and pizza casserole.  I am a firm believer in using what God has provided for us.   Remember that universal tuna or bean patty recipe I wrote about a few posts back?  Well, we discovered you can use it to make a patty from shredded cabbage also.  Today I am working at making and canning a batch of my Oven-Roasted Spaghetti Sauce ,as Ran picked a half a bushel of tomatoes this morning. Yesterday, I spent the entire day canning beets.  What a job and mess beets make!  When I can mine, I add a tablespoon of vinegar and a tablespoon of sugar to the jars, then pressure can as usual.  We love borscht and eat it about once a week during the winter, it's so good for you, so we go through a lot of beets.  And look at our onion harvest!

The smaller onions on the top tarp to the right are the ones we started from sets and the rest are from seed.  That's a garlic on the bottom right.  Ran discovered the secret to growing large onions this year.  During the first month of planting, fertilize with high nitrogen fertilizer (40-0-0) then for the rest of the season use 12-12-12 fertilizer.  And water, water, water.  We also make our own fertilizer simply by putting our grass-clippings (obviously nontreated) in a barrel and fill it with water.  This makes a very concentrated fertilizer that you need to dilute 10 to 1, the longer it sits the more you have to dilute it. Warning, hold your nose when you dip into it!

FREEBIES!

Life is funny, I had been thinking about getting a new braided rug for our dining room, but was reluctant to do so, a good wool rug is so pricey.  The very day, I decided to just do it, I went for a walk and found this one in the neighbor's garbage! 

It was the perfect colors for that room too! We carried it home and spent a good day scrubbing it, then hung it over sawhorses to dry.  The weather even cooperated in the process, as the temperatures were in the 90s, and it was very dry with high winds.  It virtually was like a dryer outside and only took a few days to dry.  See the mustard-colored Hitchcock chairs?   Always wanted some.  One day I just happened to stop by the Habitat for Humanity thrift store and there they were.  For $30!  And I got a senior citizen's discount to boot!  And they are Heywood Wakefield as an added bonus.

Only a few days later, Jamie was out for his daily walk when another neighbor was putting this light fixture out to the curb for the garbage man to take.

Just my primmy style!  And I needed a light in that very dark corner.  Couldn't have been more perfect!

Our garbage pick-up day is Monday and early in the morning Ran takes a ride around town and looks for usable wood for woodworking projects. He made me this pretty little cupboard from wood people were throwing out.

It's amazing the things people throw out.  And I don't feel the least embarrassed about admitting that, yes, I pick through the neighbor's garbage. Ha!  I'm on friendly terms with some ladies that run a food pantry and wouldn't believe the food people reject.  You'd think if you were dire enough need to get free food through a charity, you wouldn't be so particular, but people are.  It is mainly fruits and vegetables.  They offer me some, rather than throw it out and you should see the lovely jams, breads and desserts, I've made from the rejects. People really are spoiled in this country.  I hope that times never get as truly bad as the economists are predicting, because I don't think a lot of people will be able to cope. How many times have I written about eating beans or some other budget saving way to only read comments about "my husband expect meat three times a day" or "my children won't eat", or "I only eat organic" or any other such reason?  I tell you it gets tiresome.  One of the reasons I quit blogging so often.  I dare say, if you are starving, a banana with brown spots on it or a misshapen apple is going to look pretty good to you! Take it from, I've been there!

RECIPE FROM THE PANTRY

Every time I go to the Amish scratch-and-dent store I look to see if they have any dried fruits.  Dried fruits last forever if stored properly in a jar in a cool dark place.  They are just handy things to have on the pantry shelf and a handful of raisins or cranberries in your morning oatmeal can take the place of some or all of the sugar. So, here's an easy recipe that I got from the Good Old Days magazine about thirty years ago, when they used to have lots of stories about the Great Depression:

Radio Pudding

Put:

3/4 C. brown sugar

2C. boiling water

2 Tablespoons margarine (or butter)

into a 9 X 13 baking pan

Mix together:

3/4 C. sugar

1. C. flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 C. milk

1 C. raisins

Pour over the brown sugar/boiling water mixture.  Do not stir the two together.  Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.  Serve warm with whipped cream, if desired or affordable.

WARNING LOTS OF PICTURES AHEAD

My dear friend Matty, is reorganizing her garden and wanted to know how our is planned out, so here goes:

The working garden starts at this green fence, that regular readers have seen often in my posts.

 To the left are the compost bins, and two large rhubarb plants.  Directly behind it the herb garden that about 8 feet by 8 feet.  We also put trees and bushes inside there until they get big enough to brave the orchard and fend for themselves.

To the right we have two cold frames and in this narrow strip of land that's about 8 feet X 60 feet we have a strawberry patch, some early lettuces, spinach and herbs, along with perennials that are later transplanted into the flower gardens.  There are three of our heirloom and most favorite apple trees planted to the right of that.

Behind the herb garden there is the main fenced-in garden which is around 30 X 40 feet.  On the north side of the garden there are several grapevines and blackberries bushes planted along the fence.

This is a view looking westward toward the garden.  Directly behind the main garden we have an asparagus bed and then another plot about twice the size of the main garden.  In this plot we have a raspberry patch.  Here is also where we plant our potatoes, squashes and corns, things that take up a lot of space. BTW, these pictures were taken early in summer, just never got around to posting them.

This isn't a very good picture, but we have a bit of lawn, then an orchard with pear, peach, plum and apple trees.  There's also a very large hazelnut tree (?) bush.  And a bit of and that is just tilled without any perimeters for another type of squash.  On the right I have a plot of meadow land with native grasses and flowers.  And in front of the orchard area, we grow elderberry bushes (that the deer eat down to nubs every year). And that is how this family of three adults lives very well on a little 1/2-acre plot of land, supplemented with fish from nearby Lake Huron.

Well, my spaghetti sauce has roasted while I wrote this post.  Now I have to can it!  Which reminds me, that my dear friend Regina, reminded me about dehydrating the skins that are left over from canning tomatoes.  I've done that in the past, but the powder from grinding them is always sticky, so I abandoned the practice, but she suggested adding salt to powder and using it to flavor soups.  What a smart idea!  I sure have made some wonderful friends through this blog.  So anyway, this has been a very long post, so from the old Zempel Boarding House, I hope you all have a lovely week!

Hugs,

Jane

Little and Big Foxes

 Hello dear friends!  Sorry for being gone so long.  Seems like the past month has been one thing after another.   Big and little foxes.  Plus getting the garden in.  Are you having strange weather this summer?  It's 58 degrees today, but only a few days ago it was in the 90s.  We go from one extreme to another.  I guess that is what the Grand Solar Minimum is supposed to be all about, but it certainly makes for unusual gardening.  Even the plants are confused.  Phlox usually blooms in late summer here, but here is a patch that bloomed in late May!

Even stranger is that I didn't plant them there, they simply reseeded themselves from elsewhere.  My flowerbeds have a way of recreating themselves.  I can never tell what or where things are going to appear, but one thing I am none too happy about is that I have asters everywhere this year.  I have spent more time pulling them along with forget-me-nots than I ever have before.  But one thing I have discovered about myself that yanking weeds is very therapeutic.  Unawares to me, my husband snapped this picture of me in the garden:

It seems to be a very familiar sight these days.  Well, anyway the garden is in! Yep, we still have to wear heavy sweaters here.

Now the hoping, praying and weeding begins! You may not believe it, but we have peppers and tomatoes already appearing.  But on the other hand, I do not believe our corn will be knee high by the Fourth of July, as I said, it is a strange year. 

Jam Making Time

We are in a battle to beat the birds, rabbits and deer to gather our fruit before they get ahold of it.  Managed to get enough strawberries for a batch of jam.  And the other day we spied blueberries on sale at our Walmart for $2/lb. Unheard of! Couldn't resist picking up enough to make a batch of jam.  It was so good, I decided to make a second batch, but unfortunately when I returned to the store, they were now $4/lb.  We will have to treasure what we made.

Jam making is my least favorite canning chore.  Too sticky!  But we love our jam.  Rather than have baked goods, we eat a lot of jam on toast or graham crackers.  Jam making is an imprecise science, so many variables.  If you want to get good at you have to learn about sheeting.  When you are boiling your fruit and sugar let it drip off of the spoon, if it drips quickly and one drip at a time it isn't ready.  When it starts to drip off of the spoon two drips at a time and slowly, it's getting close, so start paying closer attention.  When those two drips sort of merge together, that's sheeting and the jam is ready to be bottled.  You can double check if it's ready by putting a plate in the freezer  and dropping a bit of the jam on it. Pop it back into the freezer for a few seconds, then run your finger through the jam.  If it doesn't try to run back together, but stays separated it's ready.  Anway, here's my recipe for Strawberry Preserves:

Strawberry Preserves

1 quart of stemmed, firm red-ripe strawberries

5 cups sugar

1/2 cup  of real lemon juice (do not use that bottle stuff)

Leave small berries whole, but cut up larger berries into rather large pieces

Combine berries and sugar and let stand for 3-4 hours.

Bring slowly to boiling, stirring occasionally until sugar dissolves. Cook rapidly for anywhere from 10-15 minutes, until thick.

Add lemon juice a continue boiling  until jam sheets.

Process 15 minutes in sterilized jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace in a boiling water bath.

Or you could go the easy route and just use pectin and the recipe that comes with the instructions. Ha!

These are preserves.  Preserves are larger pieces of fruit suspended in jelly.  Jam is crushed fruit and jelly uses only the juice of the fruit to make a clear, well, jelly.

On The Creative Front

In between being on the phone to banks, credit card centers, and post offices(sigh) I've managed to get a few, but not as many as I'd like, projects finished.  

I knitted this shawl, which was a kit from 

https://www.herrschners.com/premier-sierra-sideways-shawl-yarn-kit/

It's a super easy pattern, that any beginner could knit. And a great take-along project because the pattern is so easy to remember.

The skirt is a simple gathered skirt, but of course I can't make a simple skirt, can I?  I have to complicate it by adding pintucks that you can't see at the bottom, felling the seems, making lined buttonholes and covered buttons (they are my  signature).  I also made the waist higher and rearranged the pleats so they were more gathered at the back, because even though I'm ample enough from behind, these style of skirts tend to give me a very flat big bayview, as father used to call it. Here's a close-up of the back (mind you I haven't pressed it yet):

I love this fabric.   Reminds me of the early Laura Ashley fabrics, way back when her shop was a little cottage industry.  I still have to hem it.  Then I want to get back to finishing a quilt and work on some autumnal things.  There's plenty more I could write, but shan't bore you any further. Just wanted to write a little something to let you all know I hadn't forgotten about you.  Hope you all have a lovely week ahead and please remember to take time everyday to do something you enjoy!

Hugs

Jane     

Living By the Seasons

 Hello dear friends!  Sorry I've been missing, been busy putting in the garden and splitting and stacking wood. Such strange weather we're having; one day it's almost ninety, the next it's in the forties.  But it hasn't deterred the lilacs!  

 Everything that is blossoming is doing so in abundance!  If all the blooms on our fruit trees develop into fruit, we will have enough to feed the entire neighborhood!

This is part of our little orchard.  We have a about a dozen fruit trees on our little plot of land (around 1/2 acre), plus grapes, raspberries, blackberries, blueberries elderberries and strawberries.  We grow more than enough fruits and vegetables for our family and plenty to share.  If the village allowed it, there would be plenty of room for half a dozen chickens or a rabbit hutch.  Just goes to show you that you don't need a farm to supply your family with food.  Are we completely self-sufficient?  No.  But neither are those homesteaders that you see on YouTube.  Very few people are growing their own wheat and grinding it into flour or growing their own animal feed. Heck, most the people that raise chickens, don't even process them themselves. All in all, we are as prepared for hard times as much as possible, and I hope I can encourage you to do the same.  One of the keys to living a self-sufficient lifestyle is learning to live by the seasons.

In  May we begin by eating the first green things in the garden; asparagus and rhubarb.  We also eat lots of fresh herbs that are beginning to appear and dandelion greens. For example: this past week we ate an herb pizza, fish that my husband caught with a dandelion salad, a stir fry consisting of asparagus and free peppers. The peppers were free from our favorite thrift store that is run by a church.  The hold bi-weekly food pantries and when they are over the offer the leftovers to their customers.  They were beautiful peppers without a blemish.  Really, what people pass up!  Maybe soon, they will wish they had taken those peppers home and froze them for hard times coming.  But I won't lecture! Also, a lovely omelet with eggs purchased from a local farm ($2/dozen as opposed to the $3+ the stores are asking plus free-range to boot!).  BTW, if times get really tough, I will raise my own chickens or rabbits, to heck with village ordinances!  Afterall, chickens or rabbits, especially, don't make any more noise or mess than those big dogs that everyone seems to have for pets.  And you can use their manure on the garden too! For breakfast we had rhubarb sauce with toast and rhubarb pie for dessert.  Good old rhubarb never lets you down!  Soon the lettuce and spinach will be big enough to pick and the strawberries have blossoms on them, so June will start the garden eating in earnest.  

We eat mainly out of the garden from mid-June until mid-October. In late fall we eat a lot more root vegetables that we root cellar.  It is only in the deepest part of winter that we switch to our canned goods, except for meat, which I buy whenever I get a good deal and can and eat year-round.  Did you know last year our electricity was down over a dozen times?  One time for over five days.  That is why I can.  No fear of food spoiling while the electricity is out.  Oh, the food that goes to waste when that happens! 

Spring is also the time of the year we do a lot of outdoor projects.  Like this:

This is a very rustic fence made from rose briars that fills in a gap between our pine trees.  We have a herd of eight deer that think our yard is home.  Last year the mama had triplets in our back yard!  This will hopefully keep them out.  I wouldn't want to run into that thorny thing! I got the idea from a BBC series Tales from the Green Valley.  You can watch it on YouTube.  If I could say that a TV series has changed my life, this would be the one. It's history re-enactors living life as they did in 1620.  I've watched it at least a dozen times over the last ten years.  That is where I got the idea to live earnestly by the seasons.  There's something about living this way that gives me a feeling of serenity.  I guess because I'm living in the footsteps of my ancestors and living within God's rhythm.  

Just relishing each month's gifts and carefully studying nature is such a delight.  Really using all your senses to take it all in; smelling the lilacs and apple blossoms, listening to the birds, seeing the beautiful rich soil as we till it and then the tiny little plants emerging, studying when the sun rises and sets, brings you in awe of the Creator.  How anyone can believe that it all was some created by some random accident is difficult for me to fathom.  I know that lately the news seems very bleak, but please try to enjoy the wonderous world around you!  So that's it for this week at the old Zempel boarding house.  Hope you have a lovely week filled with wonder and joy!

Hugs

Jane

What Will Be, Will Be

 Hello dear friends!  Well, first the weather report, because I like to look back on older posts and see what the weather was like on that day:  more snow!  It was warm enough on Sunday for the asparagus to peep out, so when we heard the forecast for snow we ran out and picked it before it was ruined.  Got about a pound.  The first vegetables from the garden are so exciting!

We have a weekly koffee-klatch with our neighbor, Anna, where we discuss current events and hash out all the worlds woes. Ha!  Of late there's been plenty of fodder.  Are we really having inflation?  Are all the shortages for real?  Will we really have a war?  How much is too much prepared? 

My attitude is whether the issues are real or just perceived, you can bet that stores will take advantage of them.  Two things I personally witnessed are the cost of our 12-12-12 fertilizer cost $12.99 last year and the same size bag this year cost $24.99.  Fortunately, because our  governor has acted so crazily in the past, we had stocked up last year when we could purchase some, under the advice of "better safe than sorry". But whether there was an actual shortage of that fertilizer or the store saw an opportunity to make a bigger profit, that I cannot say.  

And our firewood man told us that people are charging $1100 for ten cords, up from $700 last year.   The cost of gasoline to haul it and fuel for the chainsaws hasn't gone up that much!  But oh well, the laborer has to make ends meet also. So yeah, I think inflation is real.  I wouldn't say you have to clean out your bank account or spend your mortgage payment, but what would it hurt to have a little extra of the essentials  you use often stored away for a hedge against inflation?

On the other hand, just before Easter, I bought butter for $1.79/lb!  Haven't seen those prices in ages.  As I always do when I find a fantastic deal on a staple, I try to figure out how much I need for an entire year and buy accordingly.  For me, that meant buying twelve pounds.  This is something I've been doing ever since I had a few dimes to spare, figuring out what was the lowest price and buying a year's worth.  

That's the thing, there's always something on sale.  I bought Honeysuckle White ground turkey for $1.50/lb. last week, which I made into taco meat and canned.  The clerk at the checkout asked me what I was going to do with it.  When I told her, she made a face and said she hated tacos made from ground turkey.  Well, there might come a day when she would be grateful to have that ground turkey.  As a history buff,  I can tell you, people have eaten a lot of worse things than ground turkey to stay alive.

Which reminds me of the people that always say "God will provide".  Maybe His way of providing  for you is by giving you the hint to stock up now.  "Oh, He won't let His people suffer".  Perhaps those Christians aren't familiar with the book of Job?  The life of His Only Begotten Son?  All the martyrs ?  This  very day there are Christians being martyred in China and other countries.  Sometimes He blesses  us with a soft and easy life and sometimes He blesses us even more by giving us trials to strengthen us.  Personally, I have been very poor  in the past and know what it is like to go to bed hungry and no prospects of a meal in the future.  And yes, at the time I kind of felt angry at God and thought it was unfair that I didn't have nice family that cared  and provided for me.  But you know what?   I found Someone that cared and provided more. He did carry me through those times and now I live without fear of the future.  That old saying, "there are no atheists in foxholes", when times are tough, it draws you nearer to Him.  Always remember,  your hard times are not a reflection on His love for you. Bad things do happen to good people.

The other day I was watching some YouTubers and they were all in a panic.  One lady was in tears over the fact that she couldn't find toilet paper and paper towels in the store.  Are we back to that again?  She was working herself into such a state, she was more likely to die from a heart attack than any of the scenarios  she was cooking up in her mind.  About a month ago, a neighbor came over, all upset because they were limiting the food at the grocery store and shelves were empty!  Ran and I had to see for ourselves.  We wandered around the store looking.  Looked well-stocked to us!  Then we found one aisle, the pasta and spaghetti sauce aisle, that had stickers on the shelves limiting two per person.  And the canned soup aisle was sparse. There was an empty spot where the pasta was.  Hardly anything to get in a tizzy about.  There was plenty of vegetable in both the produce and the canned vegetable aisle to make those things from scratch.  Sigh!  Some people have led soft lives!

Another YouTuber was all agitated that today was the day the big war would start.  Will it happen?  I don't know. I do know a few things, though.  Rumors of wars and actual wars have always been with us.  As a child of the cold war I've been hearing it all my life.  My friend Matty, had to wear a dog tag with her name on it at school during the Cuban missile crisis, so the could identify her body in case the school was nuked. (she lived near Cape Canaveral).  And secondly, we have very little control over any of those going-ons.  What benefit is it to work yourself up into a panic over it?  

There was a prayer that was popular in the 70s, the serenity prayer:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen!

So to end a helpful note, here are some of the things I would stock up on to see you through some  very hard times.  If that doesn't happen, you can still eat them: flour, yeast (which can be made into a sourdough starter), cans of tuna or mackerel , oatmeal, some kind of sprouting mixture so you  always have greens , popcorn or rice (cheap good fill-you-upper) some sort of fat (oil, lard, shortening), beans, cornmeal and a few pounds of sugar (as discovered from the $20 challenge I did).  And I'd learn to recognize some foraged foods such as dandelions, lambs quarters, edible mushrooms, purslane., for example.   Perhaps you won't need them, but perhaps someone else will.  And to me one of the most sorrowful things is to say to someone is, I'm sorry I haven't any to give, because when I could have been stocking up, I was wasting my resources foolishly.  This I know from experience.

Always Experimenting

 Hello dear friends!  Did you have a nice holiday?  Look what the Easter Bunny brought us!

Snow!  But that's okay, it didn't last long and it reminded of my childhood.  Growing up in northern Michigan, most of the photographs of me in my Easter outfits were  taken while standing in a snowbank. Oh!  Speaking of Easter, I went to the grocery store to stock up on eggs, thinking they would be a lost leader like they usually are this time of year.  Was I in for a surprise!  I knew that eggs and poultry costs were higher because of the avian flu scare, but I had no idea!  The first store I went to actually did have a deal at $1.59/dozen, but since it has been ages since I bought eggs I thought that was  the regular price.  So I went to Wal-mart and the cheapest eggs they had were $2.29/dozen.  Yikes!  It's a pretty sad day when the Easter ham (79cents/lb) is cheaper than the eggs.   Better brush up on all the ways to substitute other things for eggs!  I always keep flax seeds in the freezer for this purpose, but next time I shop at the bulk food store, I will stock up on more.  I used some to bake a carrot cake.  The recipe called for four eggs, but I used one and substituted the flax seed for another, and skipped the remaining two.  I also used chicken fat for half of the oil and omitted some of the oil completely. Turned out great!  

I guess you could say that cake was a "make-do" cake.  Once you get into that mindset, it becomes easier.  Here's another example of making do:

I have a limit on how much I will spend on clothes, $1. I bought this LL Bean blouse at a church rummage sale for 75 cents.  It was your standard button-down  with a chest pocket and regular collar.  I loved the print, but didn't like the collar or the pocket.  So I removed the collar from the band  and removed the pocket.  Cut the sleeves to elbow length and added elastic.  With the remaining fabric from the sleeves I made a narrow ruffle and sewed it onto the collar band.  Much more my style!  I've been cottagecore  all my life.

Another little project from my needles:

 Just a little something to use up more oddball balls of yarn from my stash.  About halfway through the first mitt, I started to worry that I didn't have enough yarn to make the second, so Ran suggested I make them into fingerless gloves.  I'm glad I did because I barely had enough yarn to finish.  It was a happy day when I knit the last stitch.  Because I made up the pattern as I went, I had scribbled little notes here and there and kept mislaying them.  I wish I had more of that green and gray yarn.  Really like the color combination.  

A Recipe, Kind Of

Well, I couldn't write a post without a recipe could I?  This is something I make often when I need a quick meal.

Meat or Meatless Patties

Mince as much as you like of any leftover meat, or  use a can of tuna, or mash a can of beans (chickpeas are really good)

Add to it a glob of mayo, about 2 tablespoonfuls, and one egg (or egg substitute)

Stir in some goodies: relish, chopped eggs, finely minced onions, diced olives, diced peppers, grated cheese.  In any combinations you like or whatever you enjoy.

Stir in about a half cup of bread crumbs (or crushed up crackers, or for beans I like to use one of those Jiffy  cornbread mixes)

Stir in you favorite seasoning that compliment the other ingredients. (Cajun  seasoning is good with tuna and curry powder is good with the chickpeas)

Form into patties.  Coat with bread crumbs and lightly fry in a bit of oil ( or use some of your tallow, lard or chicken fat).  Serve on a bun made form the last posts refrigerator potato rolls  recipe.

Two Things, One Good, One Bad

First, the good;  while I was out the other day, a man tipped his hat at me.  Wasn't that a gentlemanly  thing to do?  When did tipping hats go out of style? And he wasn't elderly either, probably in his late 30s or early 40s.  It was a little thing, but it made my day.  Sometimes it's the littlest things that brings someone  else joy.

One the other side, one day I came home at an old pitcher that I had planted with hen and chicks was laying in the yard.  Someone must had thought it was valuable and decided to take it.  Only to discover that after they dug it up, the spout was broken and it had a crack (a lady had given it to me for free at her garage sale).  I was shocked that someone would just come into the yard, so close to the house and dig it up.  Are times getting that bad?  Anyway, to end on a happy note, since it was dug up, I brought it inside, washed it up,and used it to decorate with.  Just stuck some flowers  in to kind-of cover up the broken spout. 

And that little tale was an excuse to insert a picture of the decor, as I know there's a couple of you dear friends that look forward to the glimpses of our little house. Ha!

Well, I could go on forever, but I'm sure you all have better things to do than read my ramblings. So from the old Zempel boarding house,  hope you all have a lovely day and week!  

Hugs

Jane

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

I Decided

 Hello! I decided to open up my blog to the public.   Considering the times, I thought some of you might find it useful.  I haven't decided if I will post any new content.