Houston We Have Seedlings!

Well, thanks to Mother Nature for all the rain. Now the spinach is perking up, the broccoli and cauliflower are nice and green, the radishes are all sprouted, as are the dill, scallions, cilantro, oregano, rosemary, thyme, and basil! The strawberries actually are flowering and putting out little berries! I am so excited :0)

We have been moving and setting up my quilting studio this week. Heritage Quilting Studios will officially open next Monday. At first I am just going to get my moves back by doing family quilts. Then its on to samples and hunting down decorators. I am getting excited about this venture. I believe that I can make this profitable enough that I can quit sending out resumes. Honestly, I wonder if there is anyone left out there who hasn't read my name off my resume! After 3 years of hunting, I am ready to stop waiting on someone else to recognize my potential and just utilize it myself.

We are having all kinds of bad weather lately. I will be glad when spring finally settles in and things are a bit more stable.

Early Garden Doings

It's beautiful today! Light wind, sunny skies, its just a nice breath of spring. We went to church this morning. Though I really dislike penitential seasons (Lent and Advent) I understand why they are necessary. We are almost through Lent, and every Sunday that brings us closer to Easter. Usually this is just something that happens, but this year I feel a real sense of anticipation. God is doing something in our lives, I just haven't quite figured out what it is yet :o)

The square foot garden was my project today. I have turned all the soil, added compost, and planted early crops. Mom had a baby bed that I used to make a trellis. I took the sides, tied them together and set them up in the north corner for the sugar snap peas to climb. There are 2 kinds of lettuce, spinach, cauliflower, broccoli, and radishes in the garden. The herbs are in pots, as are the strawberries (though that may have been a mistake. There might not be enough room for them.) I won't be putting anything else out until May. Then the green beans, tomatoes, white and sweet potatoes, peppers, carrots, squash and cucumbers will get their start. I have 2 medium and one large dog food bags for the potatoes to grow in. I'm going to get 40 lb bags of tops soil for the other veggies.

Yesterday I dried red, yellow and orange peppers. They turned out well. I should have something else in the dehydrator, but I am not sure what yet. I want to do a bunch of onions so I don't have to purchase dehydrated minced onion.

As for now, I think I will just enjoy this beautiful day.

Spring :)

Today was chilly but sunny. The wind was up, but 60 degrees felt pretty good! I have completely cleared the sq ft garden, and tomorrow I will be adding compost and some early vegetable seeds. I have 2 types of lettuce plants (iceberg and butter crunch), spinach, broccoli and cauliflower plants to put out. There are also sugar snap peas to go into the ground, along with radishes and beets.
After hearing about the new baby bed standards, mom decided she shouldn't use the crib that has the moving sides. I took that off her hands and am going to re-purpose it into a trellis for the peas. As a bonus the head and foot of the bed are also railed, so I can use them for cucumbers or squash!

Our Kroger is having a sale on yellow, orange, and red peppers. I bougth 2 of each and they are in the dehydrator even as I type. Strangely enough the oranges did not make the house smell all orange-y but the peppers are sure perfuming the place! They are mild and sweet though, so I don't mind.

Today I had a box in the mail. This is my birthday month and as a present to me I bought 2 books: Cooking with Food Storage Made Easy by Debbie G. Harman, and Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg, M.D. and Zoe Francois. Both books are AWESOME! I love the idea of bread that does not have to be kneaded. Frankly I just don't have the counter space for that kind of activity. This is based on dough that you make once ever week or two, and then bake daily. My kind of think ahead thing! And the food storage book is full of good advice and recipes. The idea behind this is that if you eat whole foods (grains, beans, veggies, etc) you will be healthy and the cost of your food will be significantly less than you spend on processed food. I used to think there was no way that could be true, but I am finding it to be true. I don't have to run to the store constantly for that 1 missing ingredient. The recipes are not complicated and my family likes the food. Often they don't even recognize the ingredients are food storage items.

Tonight I will need to cut the bottoms off the rest of the 2 liter bottles. They will be placed over the plants tomorrow in the garden to protect them from the cold for a few more weeks. I am really looking forward to planting my beans and potatoes. I just love blue lake green beans, and I plan to can a lot of them this year. I also want to put up chili base and pizza sauce. I was not so fond of the spaghetti sauce, but I may do some of that too if I have a good tomato year.

Had a good time yesterday with Mom and her friends. We made laundry detergent, and swapped tips on how to save money. Lets face it, anyone who lived through the depression, or lived with someone who lived through the depression, has a lot of knowledge. The detergent worked well, the company was good, and Mom fixed a yummy dinner. We had a good time.

Oranges

I love the flavor of oranges. I hate the feel of oranges in my mouth. It's just part of the wonderfulness of me, as my Hubby says. But I love the idea that I could flavor things with oranges. So, since the youngest daughter is not eating up the oranges quickly enough I have sliced those puppies up and they are in the dehydrator! This should be interesting. Even if I just use them in Sangria they will be worth the energy to thaw them. I need to do this same thing with lemons and limes... maybe a few bananas too. I have read that other folks just love to nibble on dried zucchini and yellow squash chips. I want to try it, but honestly! Yellow Squash is currently almost $3 a lb in my part of the world!!! That will have to wait until they are back to 80 cents a lb. I need to be putting the lettuce and peas in the ground. Its hard to go out there and dig around in the cold and wet. I think I am waiting until the end of the week because I need a bit of sunshine to spur me on. We are rapidly approaching the last frost date for Ky, so I can start putting out veggies. The bread machine will be going today. I am so looking forward to the oven element arriving! I didn't fully appreciate the convenience of baking until I couldn't do it anymore! It should be here by the end of the week and we will celebrate with a nice tasty casserole and brownies :)

Snow on the Daffodils

It appears that winter is not done with us yet. Tonight they are forecasting an inch of snow by morning. It shouldn't stick to the roads, since we have had several days of 60-70 degree weather in the last week. My neighbors daffodils have come up, and Mom says it always snows on the daffodils and crocus. Personally, I am ready to see the end of Winter. Bring on Spring! I can't seem to get warm today.

I picked up the Angel Food today. Turns out this church is no longer going to be a host site. Its possible that one of the other churches in town will step up and take on the job. If they do not then we will be traveling to Winchester to pick up our monthly order. I am sorry that it has come to an end. It was a great ministry, and the food was both healthy and less expensive than the grocery stores. Even with the gas money to travel for pick up it will still be cheaper than going to Wal-mart.

My daughter called today with news of an online coupon for pasta. Kroger had it on sale already for .49 cents a box. The coupon was $1 off 2 boxes, so essentially it was free! I came home with 4 boxes of whole wheat thin spaghetti, 3 boxes of spirals, 4 boxes of penne, and 2 boxes of linguine -- for $0.00!! Cant beat that! We also had a coupon for a free container of Philadelphia Cream Cheese flavored for cooking. Saved $3.00 on that item. There were a lot of buy 10 for $10 deals on soup, and we got canned fruit on sale also. Since we got the pasta for nothing I spent $4 on containers at the Dollar Tree to put it in. They have a tall canister right now that is perfect for spaghetti/linguine.

I will be dehydrating bell peppers this evening. They were also on sale. Our splurge was a marked down blackberry cobbler for $2.50 and a box of vanilla ice cream for the same price.

All in all, without the coupons or discounted items for "store members" the total was just over $100. With the coupons and discounts we paid about $58.00. How can that not be a good day???

Looks like I am going into business. I have a long arm quilting machine, and I am going to rent space from my brother. We will set up in a street level apartment building, and I will quilt quilts for people, make bedding (comforters, bedspreads, pillow shams, and bed skirts). I hope that I can work with decorators so that I have several and the work is steady. I am putting together a price list and sorting and packing up my supplies here at the house to move them out. I will gain a bedroom here, and hope to do better than break even. My cousin is making quilt tops which we will sell as completed items online, or at Court Day (the local fall festival).

Visiting Family

This week my Mom and I took a trip to visit my cousin Rebecca and her family. I am the oldest of this generation, so while my children are grown hers are just little ones. I had forgotten all the joys and aggrevations of having children under 5 under foot. They do some adorable things. The youngest crawled up in my lap and asked why I had washed my hair? I said, "Because it was dirty. Why do you wash your hair?" She dipped her head and looked up at me and said, " So I am pretty for you!" How can you not love a kid like that?

We have wandered around discussing garden layouts, trellising, and how to keep the chickens out of the garden. The chickens have been very entertaining. The weather was pretty for the first few days, so the kids played outside. I got to meet Becca's buddy Jen, and we talked about soap making. Unfortunately we did not get to make soap this trip, but maybe next time.

Becca made up her white bread recipe and my light whole wheat. They are both really good! Becca is working on a quilt top that I will quilt (for sale). We are hoping that we can make a business of it and help both our families out with a little extra cash.

Through all this female bonding Becca's husband Mike has been kind enough to cart the kids up to the "upstairs" and keep them there overnight. Its allowed us to have some really great belly laughs in the evening, and quieter conversation too.

I have been checking out the Excaliber Food Dehydrator that Becca just got. It is a sweet little machine. My dehydrator puts out a lot of heat, but this one is more temperate. Her broccoli is just drying up beautifully.

We played a new board game called Blokus by Mattel. Its a lot of fun and even the little kids can play (with a bit of assistance). I think it might be on my future list of purchases.

Tomorrow we head home, and though it will be good to sleep in my own bed, it was a very good visit!

Bread Machine

My "new-to-me" bread machine came home yesterday and I have made 3 loaves of really nice light wheat bread! I used the dough setting and baked them in the oven, and they are a wonderful texture. Here's the recipe:

1 cup warm water (I use tap water from the hot side of the spikot)
2 tsp sugar
1 package yeast (I buy this in bulk, and used 1 1/4 tbsp)
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 1/2 cups bread flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/2 tsp salt

Though it flies in the face of conventional wisdom, combine the water, sugar, and yeast in the bread machine and let it sit for 10 minutes. This allows the yeast to feed on the sugar. Then add the other ingredients. Set bread machine for dough cycle if baking in the oven, or light crust white bread if baking in bread machine. Brush tops with butter or margarine and bake in oven for 45-50 minutes at 350 degrees. (Note: Usually I have read you can tell if your bread is finished cooking by thumping it. If it sounds hollow its done. This bread does not sound hollow.)

I have small foil bread pans, so I took the dough out of the machine and pinched it in half. Then, holding one half, I folded the edges under, turned the dough, and folded again so that I could shape the dough. Because I did not knead the dough, there were not big air bubbles in the bread. Then for the third loaf I used the full amount of dough in one pan and it worked well.

My other "experiment" this weekend was to use the Magic Mix to make chocolate pudding. It was easy and tasty. Here's the recipe:

1/2 cup sugar
1 cup Magic Mix
2-3 tbsp cocoa
2 cups water
1 tsp vanilla

In a medium size sauce pan, combine sugar, MM, cocoa, and water. Stir over medum heat constantly until the mix is disolved and begins to bubble. Remove from heat and beat in vanilla.
I found that I could start with a whisk, but had to go to a different utensil to get all the edges of the pan. Definitely stay with it because it will thicken and scorch if you don't. Pour into serving bowls, cover with plastic wrap on top of the mixture, and chill.