Monday on the Homestead

-

 


I am up early this morning as usual.  Tobin just left for work.   I have a load of towels drying right now and a load of hubby’s work uniforms in the washer…. and now I am working on my to-do list for the day.


 


We have sing practice with the homeschool group this afternoon.  This will be our last practice before we sing for the senior luncheon on Friday.  The kids are sounding good! 


 


Hannah is working for our pastor this morning.  She does data entry type things for him (for the church) about once a month, and usually another time during the month she helps him with other office type jobs. 


 


I need to get school work for the kids organized for the week, send out some orders from my little store, set out some rice to soak for tonight’s dinner, and pull up some hamburger from the freezer to defrost for dinner too (we are having hamburger gravy over brown rice and a salad). 


 


I have a nice box of apples sitting here that I need to do something with.  The kids have made a huge dent in the box just by eating them!  They are sweet and good!  I was thinking of maybe a good apple bread or apple cake recipe..  Have to see what recipes I have for this..  and work on it when I get home.


 


Before Tobin left for work he got a fire going.  I think he said it was 36 degrees outside this morning.  I feel the house warming up now as I type.  The other added bonus to heating with wood is that we end up with lots of hot water for free!  Tobin plumbed the pipes from the water tank through our wood furnace so every heating season we have an abundance of water available to us and we actually see our electricity bill drop.  All this reminds me that I need to get this blog posted so I can go tend to the fire…  


 


That should do it for Monday on the Homestead!

Comments

Post a Comment

All messages are moderated. After approval your message will be posted. Thank you for your comments!! Crystal :)

Popular posts from this blog

Canning Cabbage

-
Image
I had 4 large heads of cabbage that weighted about 25 pounds. We had some really hot days and I figured I better get the last of them picked soon. My daughter Sierra and I ended up processing 3 of them yesterday and I have one left for a meal on my menu this week. I made pickled cabbage and then canned up the last of the cabbage. Here is the recipe for the pickled cabbage (according to how I made it)… 8 pounds cabbage 1 large onion 1 ½ red peppers 1 lb carrots ¾ cup salt 9 cups water 12 cups white vinegar 10 cups sugar 1t mustard seed 1t celery seed Slice cabbage thinly. Slice onion and peppers. Grate carrots. Mix all veggies together in a very large bowl. Sprinkle with salt and mix in well. Let sit for 2 hours to soften veggies. Rinse veggies well.  In a large stock pot (mine was 14 quarts) combine water, vinegar, sugar, spices. Bring to a boil. Add cabbage/veggies. Bring to a boil. Fill hot pint jars with veggies using a slotted spoon. Fill jar with brine to
Read more

Canning Chicken Noodle-less Soup

-
Image
Today was one of those busy days that it seemed I was moving from the time my feet hit the floor until this evening.. But, I got so much done and that is a great feeling! :) One of my accomplishments today was canning 14 jars of chicken noodle-less soup. I call it “noodle-less” because you can’t can noodles. They end up falling apart. So I canned the chicken, veggies and broth. When I go to use the soup I will bring it to a boil and then add a handful of noodles (any type of pasta will work) and cook it until the noodles are done. Because I plan to add the pasta after the fact I wanted to make sure there was enough chicken broth to do this. So I only filled my jars about half to two thirds with chicken and veggies and then filled with chicken broth. Here is how I did this…. I started off with 2 chickens that were a total weight of about 10lbs. I put them in my 14 quart stock pot… I then added 2 gallons of water.. And 3 tablespoons salt.. I brought this
Read more

Dishwasher Soap Sub

-
Image
One of the most common emails I receive is ladies asking if I have a good homemade substitute for dishwasher detergent. After making my own homemade laundry detergent and having such great success I was eager to try and find something that worked as well in my dishwasher. I found and tried a couple different recipes. I was not happy with the results at all. The most common recipe I came across was a combination of washing soda, borax and citric acid (some recipes used Kool-Aid in place of the citric acid). What I discovered is that this combination left a cloudy film all over my dishes that was hard as heck to remove. I quickly went back to Cascade and gave up trying to find a substitute. Well, last week I ran out of dishwasher soap. Because I live rurally just hopping in the car to run and pick up one item is out of the question. Plus, at that point my hand had not healed enough to be able to drive (I have a stick shift and could not shift with my right hand). I had
Read more