Homemaking on the Homestead

Wednesday Snap Shot is a quick peek into my week. If you'd like to join in on my Wednesday Snap Shot.. copy and paste my post, add your answers (you can also copy the pic..BUT Please download the picture to your computer first.. do not just directly copy and paste.. otherwise you are using my bandwidth..thank you! :) .. link your post to my blog and then come back and let me know you shared your week. I'll come and visit you and read about your homemaking week!! :) So Far This Week I had a super nice week. It was quiet in some ways. My son left to go see his sister in Sacramento. He was accompanying my daughter Hannah and her children. And she was very thankful to have him join her. She was going to go on her own, as her hubby had to work. In the end she was so grateful for his help. A 12 hour road trip with 4 children is not easy, especially if you are on your own! :) While he was gone the house was quiet. It was just me and hubby. We enjoyed it but w...

We had a wonderfully nice hot weekend, but then I love the heat! :) It was hard to think about cooking and food when it was hot, but I managed to come up with a few meals for the week. Tonight I'm making pulled pork sandwiches . I'll use one of my pork roasts that I have from the big roast I bought last week. I'll serve it with coleslaw and use up some cabbage I have for this. I may also make a bean side dish. Both the pulled pork and the beans will be cooked in my Instant Pot. A fruit salad on the side sounds like a nice summer meal. Here what's on my menu for the rest of the week.. Meatloaf I'm thinking of putting my little toaster oven on the deck to cook my meatloaf in. It will keep my kitchen cooler. I'll cook up a few sweet potatoes (in my Instant Pot) and serve garlic bread and a salad on the side. Summer Pasta Can't remember where I first saw this recipe but I like i...

Friday in the Kitchen is about sharing some of the food I've been cooking in my kitchen recently. Stretching Out Dinner On my menu this week was Hawaiian BBQ Taco's . So I made them on Tuesday. They were delicious! We really enjoyed them. I started by making the pineapple slaw that goes with them. It was not only a meal that tasted it good it was pretty as well! The slaw... I used my Instant Pot to make the chicken. I found with the liquid amounts in this crockpot recipe I did not have to add any extra liquid to my IP. I used chicken thighs and cooked them for 12 minutes. They were perfect. I cut the recipe for the meat and sauce in half as I was only feeding 3 of us. The tacos.. We ate up all the meat for dinner that night. So the next night I still had quite a bit of the slaw left and decided to make the same meal again only using pork. This worked well as I was cutting up a 15 pound pork roast for the freezer and used about 2 pounds of...

Wednesday Snap Shot is a quick peek into my week. If you'd like to join in on my Wednesday Snap Shot.. copy and paste my post, add your answers (you can also copy the pic..BUT Please download the picture to your computer first.. do not just directly copy and paste.. otherwise you are using my bandwidth..thank you! :) .. link your post to my blog and then come back and let me know you shared your week. I'll come and visit you and read about your homemaking week!! :) So Far This Week It's been a great week so far. The sun is finally shining and that makes any week a good one.. :) Summer might just be here in the PNW! We will see.. The other morning was warm and sunny and I stepped outside to enjoy my coffee on the deck and see my buck in the front yard. Made me smile, so I snapped a pic of him (I know I previously shared this on my FaceBook page, but it's too cute not to share again :) Over the Father's Day weekend we had a few of th...

I hope you had a good Father's Day. Ours was quiet, Sunday is a work day for my hubby. He had phone calls and visits from the kids and that was nice. I made a nice dinner for him as well. It was not something I had originally planned, but I had everything on hand to make it. I made a pork loin roast, baked beans, macaroni salad and a green salad. I had a couple kids here to help us eat all the food, but still have enough for leftovers tonight. Today is grocery shopping and running a few errands. It will be nice to just have to reheat dinner in the microwave this evening. Here what's on my menu for the rest of the week.. Chicken Salad & Grilled Cheese Sandwiches I plan on making a main dish chicken salad with lots of yummy greens and veggies. I'll marinate chicken breasts or thighs before grilling them for the salad. Shrimp Scampi It's a quick and easy meal to put together. I sautee garlic in butter and add a little lemon juice and my shr...

Wednesday Snap Shot is a quick peek into my week. If you'd like to join in on my Wednesday Snap Shot.. copy and paste my post, add your answers (you can also copy the pic..BUT Please download the picture to your computer first.. do not just directly copy and paste.. otherwise you are using my bandwidth..thank you! :) .. link your post to my blog and then come back and let me know you shared your week. I'll come and visit you and read about your homemaking week!! :) So Far This Week It's so nice to back! It was a much needed break. Hubby and I enjoyed some vacation time as well. We headed south to the desert. Living in this waterlogged and cloudy part of the world we so enjoy just getting away and soaking up heat, sunshine and pool time. We also met up with friends of ours that are from England. We meet up with them yearly and always look forward to our visits. We stay in touch through the year with cards and phone calls, but in person visits can...

I'm baaacckk!! :) It was a wonderful break and just what I needed. Hubby and I had a little vacation time during my break and that was refreshing as well. While I enjoyed my break and enjoyed eating out while on vacation, there is something so nice about homemade, home cooked food. I'm happy to be back to menu planning once again. We did a little grocery shopping as soon as we got back home but only enough to last for a few days. Today is a big grocery shopping day, I need to get my fridge and pantry stocked up again. Here is what I plan to make this week... Lasagna, French Bread, Salad, Green Beans This meal should be simple enough to put together when I get home from grocery shopping. I've posted my basic lasagna recipe below this weeks menu. I've been buying fresh green beans and they are so yummy. I cook them up in my Instant Pot with a little salt, pepper and butter. They make ...

Father's Day is right around the corner.  I posted this last year in honor of all hard working, loving and caring dad's out there...   My hubby has been working very hard this spring on our homestead. He also works a full time job and commutes 45 minutes each way to work. His weeks are often very long. Last winter we had a huge tree fall during a storm. This spring he began to clean up the tree. The tree was so big it will provide all our firewood for this year and much of what we will need for next year. It has been a big project. He has just kept working at it day by day. Sawing the limbs off one by one, bringing the wood up closer to the house and then cutting it up and splitting it by hand. The other day he said to me that his hands were aching a bit and could I rub them. I of course did. And as I rubbed his hands I just started noticing them even more so. They feel rough and have cuts and callouses from the work he has been doing. I spent ...

Cook food up a head of time for the freezer is so helpful.  When I don't want to fuss with putting complete meals in the freezer I will make up "Freezer Mixes".    These are made of cooked meats and seasonings that can be used in various meals.   This post shows how I make "Hamburger Mix".  This mix is very versatile.  You can use it to make chili, tacos, soup, spaghetti....  and more!     For this tutorial I used 3lbs o f hamburger to make my Hamburger Mix recipe (this is one of the recipes from my ebook Freezer Cooking with Meal Starters ).  The original recipe calls for using 5lbs of hamburger.  I added a quart of my home canned red beans to stretch the meat out. The original recipe (posted below) uses just hamburger.   Here is what I did… I cut my pepper (I used a red pepper because that is what I had on hand) and onion. Then gathered the rest of the ingredients.. I cooked up ...