Tuesday, July 30, 2013

This weeks adventures in canning.

I'm pretty new to this whole canning business.

I have been eating home canned food my whole life but until this year I hadn't had much interest in doing this myself.

So far I have canned: Spaghetti Sauce, Green Beans, Squash and Zucchini, Vegetable Soup, and Chicken Stock.

I would LOVE to know what your favorite canning recipes are.  I have a table full of squash and cucumbers that are just begging to be turned into pickles... they will just have to wait their turn.

Green Beans
the USDA doesn't recommend canning squash and zucchini... I did it anyway.
Spaghetti Sauce
This sauce is supper yummy and easy to make.

Sister Soup - Recipe to be posted later.

Syd had a great time peeling tomatoes.

Piper is a champion onion chopper.

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Gentle Reminders

The past two days have been... challenging.  Through the summer I go for longer and longer stretches between fibro flares.  Sure, I have aches and pains but nothing like the pain I deal with through the winter. This latest low-pressure system came out of nowhere and has really done a number on me

Gentle reminder - Summer won't last forever.  Enjoy it while its here.

Some of the shenanigans we've been up to recently:



LOTS of food preservation going on here.  LOTS more to go.

Everything is better stuffed with cream cheese and wrapped in bacon.
MMmmm... Bacon.

Also... lots of creative uses for the bountiful harvest.

I sort of feel like this guy is an over achiever.

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Chicken Pot Pie

It is SUPER hot right now.  Like might melt your face off hot...  but when Jeff brought home some of the new Pilsbury GF buckets of dough I decided I had to make a chicken pot pie.  Super yum.  I made it up on the fly and I'm super awful at actually creating recipes.  It's a lot like work, ya'll.  So this is roughly what I did.

I rolled out the first half of the dough to make the bottom crust and even though it didn't say to I poked some holes on the bottom with a fork and par baked it at 425 for about 15 minutes.

For the filling I cubed and browned 2 chicken breasts.  Right before I removed it from the pan I put in about a tablespoon of fresh chopped rosemary.  Removed the chicken from the pan and then sauted some onions, carrots, and green beans - 'cause goodness gracious we have a lot of green beans right now.  I didn't have any chicken stock so I used 2 teaspoons of  Mrs. Miller's Gluten Free Chicken Flavored soup base in a cup of boiling water and used that with about a teaspoon of corn starch to help create a gravy.  It worked pretty well but I think next time I might try adding some instant mashed potatoes - just to see what happens.

Once all of that jazz was cooked up I added the filling to the pie and then rolled out the top.  It worked out pretty well.  Hard to complain really considering how hot and humid it is and we were in a hot kitchen.  Take your time when working with this product and you won't be disappointed.  Cooked the pie for 30 minutes at 425 and it was golden and bubbly.  The edges got a bit dark but that could have been avoided by using foil around the edge of the crust.


Now to do something with these...



Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Busy Summer Fun

Having a great BUSY summer.  Starting the back to school process.  Look out Kindergarten!

Painting gourds for bird houses

Getting motion sickness at a Paul McCartney concert.  MACCA!

There was a LOT going on.

Enjoying flowers I don't remember planting.

GARDEN!