This little fellow was in the guttering above one of the apartments in our complex. I ask the maintenance guy if I could have it when they got around to cleaning the gutters. The poor thing was all shriveled up and the dirt around it was bone dry when he handed it to me. I put the bag in a loaf pan and filled the pan level full of water. The dirt is about dry again. Next time I'm in a big box store I need to look for a planter for it, so I can get it potted and outside with the rest of my cactus.
I have no idea what kind of cactus it is, but I think it is a type of prickly pear. I have seen prickly pears around Phoenix that have a more elongated pad than the classic round pads. Wonder what type and color of flower it has when it blooms? And what the tunas (fruit) taste like, cause evidently it tastes good to some bird.
Knitted some more on my sweater. I've got most of the body knitted and as usual with stockinette it is all curled up and not very photogenic.
Cooked up and dehydrated some ground beef we found on sale to make backpacker's gravel for camping and such.
Starting to finish our remodel of our travel trailer. We have one bed frame installed but can't seem to get to the other because life is interfering.
Hubby's mother entered hospice and has passed away. The dear lady is now without pain for which we are all very thankful.
We decided to trade our diesel pick-up truck in that we tow the trailer with for a gasoline powered one. That will lower our one-n-only payment. The good news is the loan isn't for any longer than what was left on the diesel. A little monetary breathing room would be nice.
We've been kicking around the earth boxes idea. The cost is way more than we can afford so I've been looking at DIY clones of earth boxes. I think we will use that guy's idea with the wicking system that I saw in this video. We are hoping to get some kind of garden this year because it is still very dry here. So unless we get a lot more rain this spring, things don't look good for crops or forage for animals. The watershed ponds are still dry.
That's about it except our anniversary rolled around this month. We went to Emporia, KS and picked up Sister Suzy. Then, the three of us played in the hot-tub and heated swimming pool for two day at the hotel.
I can't believe I stuck with blogging long enough to get to 100! Will I get another 100 in? I don't know; we will see.
The Creative Muse has, evidently, wondered off to do other things. I have a half done quilt that has been setting here since before Christmas that isn't any more done than it was when I wondered off to do something else and it is not crying out to be finished. All the blocks are completed and quilted. The setting strips for the front and back are done but the desire isn't there.
I started a new afghan with the yarn from an afghan I wasn't going to finish. I found a pattern I really liked of an aran afghan that was for extra chunky weight yarn. I only have worsted so I found and swatched the border pattern, and the two cables patterns in the center panel. Figured out the gauge and added one more cable each of the cable patterns in the center panel. I have 12 inches knitted and the desire/pressure just isn't there to work on it. As I said the Muse has wondered off.
I would say She is in the nesting mood. Cooking and housekeeping are taking a precedent. She wants to clear the junk and find tasty new recipes. Gardening however doesn't thrill Her. But de-junking the yard does! So I will follow Her around and see where She leads me.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is blogging may get even more infrequent that it has been in the past if I have nothing creative to post.
Been busier than a cat playing in a litter box. So, I'll start with, I'm still dehydrating like a possessed person trying to make up for my failed garden. If something is on sale it comes home in larger quantities to be sliced up, blanched and dehydrated. This week it is bell peppers, last week it was celery. I'm always amazed how much bell pepper and celery shrink up. 10 bell peppers reduces to one pint and 8 pounds of celery reduces to a quart.
I was out on the web playing around (Nothing new there :>) ) and came across an entry about regrowing produce from the grocery store. I have done this with ginger-root and have a plant I need to re pot and harvest. I read an entry about celery and though why not! So I set a celery bottom in a shallow pan of water and sure enough, it sprouted new leaves. Then the next time celery was on sale I did nine more celery bottoms and all of them sprouted. I now have a shallow tote with potting soil in it with 10 celery bottoms merrily growing in a south-facing window. Now to remember to water! LOL
I'll have to tell you about my Christmas quilting and knitting adventures later.
9/9/2011, 1:39 am Read at your own risk! I am still editing this thing!
My garden was a total loss this year. Nothing survived the heat and lack of water. I lost my drake and a chicken hen to the heat and another hen to predation (stray dog as usual). So I'm down to 4 chicken hens, 2 duck hens, 2 dogs, and a cat.
So know I am playing the "What's on sell this week? -N- Where is the biggest bang for my buck?" I picked up 20 lbs. of russet potatoes the other day and ran 10 lbs. through the dehydrator as mashed potatoes out of curiosity. Ten lbs. of potatoes were reduced to a little over 3 pints of flakes or buds. I cooked the potatoes, then mashed them with a little potato water. I then took about a cup and a half of mashed potatoes and put them on a Teflon sheet and rolled the potatoes out like a pie crust with piece of parchment paper on top and then dehydrated them at 120 degrees until each of my nine trays were crisp. Then I loaded up my food processor with broken up sheets of potato and whizzed them around until they were potato flake size.
I did sort of same thing with all my leftover sweet potatoes from last fall. After all the hard work to get those potatoes in last fall I didn't want to loose them to sprouting. While I was out on the web fooling around I came across a web-site with some you-tube videos on dehydrating. They had one where she boiled the sweet potatoes whole with skins on until just done. Then you peeled the potatoes, cut off a big slice, and smashed it between two pieces of parchment paper with a rolling pen and dehydrated the rounds. So I thought, why not just mash your sweet potatoes with a potato masher and spread out the pulp, as I had a lot of little potatoes that I need to do something with. So I took a cup of sweet potato pulp and plopped it on a Teflon leather sheet and used a piece of parchment paper and rolled it out to the size of my Teflon sheet and dehydrating 1 cup of pulp per sheet with a total load of 9 cups. I reduced the sweet potatoes down to about 4 quart-fruit jars. I will most likely add a hand full of sweet potato flakes to soup and stews, as I am the only one who likes to eat sweet potatoes as is, this way the sweet potatoes will get eaten up, maybe.
We have been participating in Banana-Thursday at the local grocery store. On Thursdays the bananas are the loss-leader at 18 cents a pound, limit five pounds. Hubby doesn't like raw bananas but loves banana-nut bread so we get the five pounds of bananas and bring them home then what Sister Suzy and I don't eat I have been dehydrating them into chips to make banana-nut bread later. Then we discovered on Friday mornings any bananas leftover from Banana-Thursday are still on sale and no limit! I have enough banana chips to make a dozen loaves of banana-nut bread so now my shekels are going to be spent on other fruits and vegetables to preserve.
I'm eyeing the bell peppers and jalapenos now because all the pepper plants were part of the shriveled up and dead. Ten bell peppers dehydrates down to a pint! I cook with a lot of bell peppers so I hope I find some good sales on them!
Cabbage was on sale this week so I am going to can up a couple of batches of Amish Cole Slaw. I found a recipe on Jackie Clay's blog in Backwoods Home Magazine's web site. I have made one batch and we tried one jar. Hubby and I thought it was very tasty. Sister Suzy choked down one bite, however she doesn't like anything pickled. I know, strange! It has a lovely sweet and sour taste.
Have a good evening!
Judy
P.S. Oh My God! I can't think and type at the same time! I hope I have all the grammatical and spelling errors fixed! I think I have edited this thing about a million times after I hit the publish button and Microsoft Word said it was good! Judy
What have I been up to the past week? Well, let's see. For starters I have been gardening. I tore up two spots for permanent raised beds. There are 40 asparagus crowns and 50 strawberry plants in the first one. The other bed has moved around in the back yard several times before I decided where I would put it. The first location I staked it out last fall. Then I moved it north of the asparagus/strawberry bed and even got a round or two of roto-tilling done. After Hubby tripped, fell, and we thought the roto-tiller was going to eat him, (He still has a knot on the back of his head and a couple of small cuts) we quit for the day. I got up the next day and moved the second bed next to the first one. It will have a cement-paver path between them, the width of a paver. I will be planting 6 thorn-less raspberries in the middle of the second bed and I am looking for some perennial herbs to add to each end.
While we were chewing up Hubby, we were burning brush and weeds inside the fence of the garden and a brush pile on top of the stumps of a pecan tree we had cut down that was in the power lines. We would like to get the stumps burnt out because they are also where we would like to put up a fence across the back property line. Getting the fence up will slow down the two-legged varmints wondering through the yard.
I haven't done much with the sweater I restarted. My hands have been numb and swollen from all the garden work. It rained Saturday morning and then cooled down so I haven't been back out to the garden. Sunday morning I was pleasantly surprised when I picked up my needles and my hands didn't hurt so I spent the day knitting. Tomorrow I will need to get back outside to burn more brush if the wind isn't too high.
Taught Sister Suzy how to formally address an envelope, in cursive. I can not believe they haven't been taught how to do this in English class! There are occasions when you need to know how to do it and when to do it! We went through old photographs to find 4 pictures of her at different ages to be put on a disk with the other kids who are graduating. It will be played on a loop before the graduation ceremony.
Will I never learn!? I am not a spring chicken any more. I don't bounce back quite as fast either! Today I went out and dug up the sweet potato patch. My body is really, really unhappy with me. My shoulders are getting stiffer as the day wears on and my butt-tocks (as Forrest Gump would say), well it hurts to sit on them.
Thank goodness Sister Suzy showed up. She dug the last five feet or so, or I would probably still be out there whining and trying to get that last little bit dug up. We filled a big plastic tote with potatoes. We got about 100 pounds or so.
I will put a sheet of cardboard under the dining room table to spread the potatoes out in a single layer to cure. I am looking forward to baked sweet potato, sweet potato pie and sweet potatoes chips.
Baked Sweet Potato
My mother learned to make baked sweet potatoes from an old black gentleman by the name of John Horn. She meet him in the late '40s. He was a junk dealer in Parsons, Kansas.
Scrub your sweet potatoes, use a russet size baking potato. Wrap in aluminum foil. Bake in a 350 degree Fahrenheit oven until tender. Break open the skin. Put a shake of salt on and a couple pats of butter. Taste for sweetness. Your potato may need a little sprinkle of sugar or a drizzle of honey. Enjoy!
Sweet Potato Pie
You can use your favorite pumpkin pie recipe. In my case that would be my Aunt Olive's Pumpkin Chiffon Pie recipe.
1 9-inch graham cracker pie crust 1 envelope unflavored gelatin 1/4 cup cold water 2 eggs separated 2 cup sugar 1 1/4 cup pumpkin or sweet potato, cooked and pureed 1 cup milk 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon cinnamon 1 teaspoon nutmeg 1 teaspoon ginger 1/2 cup heavy cream
Soften gelatin in cold water. Combine egg yolks and 1 cup sugar in saucepan; beat until thick. Add pumpkin(or sweet potato), milk, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until slightly thick. Remove from heat. Add softened gelatin; stir until dissolved. Chill until mixture begins to thicken. Beat egg whites in mixing bowl until foamy. Gradually add 1/2 of sugar, beat until stiff peaks form. Beat cream and last 1/2 cup sugar until stiff; fold gently but thoroughly into gelatin mixture; them fold in egg whites. Spoon into pie crust. Chill until firm, at least 4 hours. If desired, garnish with whipped cream.
Edit: 11/25/2010 I cut the sugar to 1 cup total and it was sweet enough. Use 1/2 cup sugar with the egg yolks and skip the 1/2 cup sugar in the cream. Judy Sweet PotatoesChips
I found this recipe on the FoodNetwork.com with some changes of my own.
enough sweet potatoes for your family, about 4 bakers for us enough vegetable oil for deep-frying
spice mixes for shaking on after frying Savory 2 teaspoons chili powder 1 teaspoon garlic powder 1/4 teaspoon cayenne powder 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin 1 teaspoon salt 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper Sweet 1 Tablespoon brown sugar 1/2 teaspoon salt pinch cayenne powder(optional) pinch cinnamon
Peel sweet potatoes and discard skin(duh). Slice in thin chips. Place in a bowl of ice water for 1 hour. Drain in a colander; layout on paper towels; pat dry.
Heat oil in a large pot to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Fry potatoes in batches for 2 to 3 minutes until golden brown.(Mine take a little longer because I don't get them super thin.) Lift chips out with slotted spoon and drain on paper towels. Season with the spice mixtures and serve immediately.
Ouch! I found a new ache, whine, whimper, whine. My Knees! I think it is going to be a 3 Ibuprofen night! Sniffle!
My inspiration this morning when I woke up was to dehydrate them. I looked at my two dehydrator books and then went out on the web. There are a lot of things we can do with dehydrated apples. I will see how the apples look and taste before doing another batch. I am using an Excalibur nine tray with a thermostat. I've used and thrown away a round stackable one with no temperature controls. I threw away food :( We could of saved money by just buying the Excalibur. Sometimes spending the money up front is the most cost effective way of doing something.
I am going to save the peeling and cores to make apple butter on the next batch. My mother said my grandmother did that with apples, peaches, and pears. I have done it once in the past and it made the best apple butter. You put the cores and peeling in a stock pot with some water. You boil it until it thickens, then you run the pulp through a tomato strainer similar to this one :
The one I have will do raw tomatoes, raspberries, and apple peelings and cores. I taste for sweetness, then add spices, and cook down to apple butter consistence(spelling?). The batch of apple butter I made this way I didn't add any sugar. The apples I used were sweet enough! I must confess I don't like overly sweet apple butter. I like it on the tart side!
I saw something wild while out looking for a new place for my Mother-in-law to live. This:
I saw a banana plant in the front flowerbeds of two homes in Augusta, Ks! I did a double take! I wonder where they got them? Are they are dwarfs? Were they in pots? Were they in the ground? Do they over winter them in the house? Do they get bananas? Guess I could of had Hubby stop, but we were on a mission.
