From My Home to Yours
3/14/25
~ a week of making everything count ~
On Monday I cleaned out the refrigerator of leftovers. I found about a half cup of fried skillet corn, about 1 cup of pinto beans, about 3 cups of leftover beef stew and some leftover mushroom sauce from a meatballs/mushroom sauce meal we had last week. I reached into the fridge and took out a small bag of English peas from last year's garden, popped them into the microwave for a quick cook, and opened up a jar of home-canned chicken. I drained the chicken and then mixed everything together and put it in a 9 x 13 casserole dish. I then made the pourable crust recipe I use for pot pies and poured it over the top of the mixture. It went in a 400-degree oven for about 40 minutes and was ready to serve. (All the flavors really melded well together and made a delicious meal ... in fact we got two meals out of it!)
Here's the recipe I use for the pourable crust ...
(mix all together and pour over crust)
1 cup self-rising flour
1 stick melted butter
1 cup milk
Before we continue with our theme this week of making everything count, I wanted to show you what I'm enjoying every day right now! This is at one corner of our house ... isn't it just beautiful! I just love that old fashioned dinner bell and the forsythia ... oh my ... I'm trying to soak in all the forsythia's beauty as it will be gone before you know it and I'll have to wait until next year to see its spectacular blooms again.
Okay, back to making everything count ... I added food scraps, a cardboard egg carton that had gotten wet and come apart, the cardboard tubes from toilet paper and paper towels, chicken poo from the chicken coop, leaves from our yard, shredded paper and wood ash from our wood stove. I'm setting up several of these 'protected from the critters' compost bins at different places in our row garden and larger raised beds.
It's that time of year again that pits me against the critters ... and I'm not backing down! Having come up with a solution for the critters getting into our compost bin, I am now trying to outsmart the deer in our area. Oh, the lengths that I am going to protect my spring garden from their destructive behavior!
I harvested nettles and parsley today and while harvesting the nettles I cleaned up the area from the winter debris etc. In the process I accidentally pulled up several pieces of nettles that had roots. Not being one to just toss them I replanted them in the area where our elderberry bushes grow. While replanting the nettles, I observed all these new baby elderberry plants/bushes that can't stay where they've come up. I'll relocate a few to another place on our property but for the most part they will have to be mowed down. I hate to waste them, but I don't need all these! If you're local to me and want any, let me know ... they're free!
I made two pecan pies, one for us and one to share. Ours was delicious but the next day I noticed the arthritis in my hands really bothering me. I thought and thought and thought about what might be causing a flare up and then I remembered the pie! I may or may not have eaten more than one piece and the sugar and corn syrup in it made me have a flare-up! Lesson reiterated!!! If you can't eat treats with moderation, then you can't have them at all! Oh, my aching hands! Please tell me I'm not the only one that makes poor food choices and then reaps the consequences!
I started the process of sprouting sweet potatoes for planting. I have them in this crate so I can easily grab it and move it inside should we have a cold night. I'll keep an eye on the water level in each jar making sure to keep it topped off, so the sprouting doesn't get held up.
I've been growing the same bunching onions for years. This is really the onion that keeps on giving as long as you take care of them. The first picture on the left started out as one single onion plant the beginning of last year. I pulled it up and separated the onions (second picture). In the third picture I removed most of the green blades and then trimmed off the bad parts of those. I took the blades inside and prepped them for the dehydrator. Once they are completely dry, I will powder them and use them for onion powder in cooking and in making seasoning mixes. In the last picture I took the now separated and trimmed up onion plants and placed them in a recycled #10 can and added a small amount of water in the bottom. While they got a good drink, I prepped a new area to plant them to begin the process all over again. I probably have 20 -30 bunches, like in the first picture, to pull, separate, trim up and replant. In our area, these will grow year-round giving me access to fresh green onions throughout the year.
On my seed starting schedule for this week is tomatoes, peppers, zinnias and marigold. This is all the seeds I will be starting for spring planting as we will be able to start direct sewing by the end of the month if the weather cooperates.
For an update on how the seeds I've planted using the plastic jug method are doing, well, I can honestly say I am amazed. I have simply been able to plant them and forget them ... not that I did that entirely as I visited them daily to see if there were any new sprouts/plants that had germinated and popped through the ground. Yes, I admit to peering down into each and every jug every day to get a glimpse ... it's like Christmas in the garden!
It's been a while since I've had any sewing projects to share, but this week I managed to put the finishing touches on a few. These quilted zippered pouches are one and there more over on my Grandmas Got a Sewing Machine blog.
Let's wrap this post up with something that made my heart sing this week ... I received two different 'happy mail' cards in the mail! Happy mail is when you send someone something just to cheer them on or encourage them. Hence the name 'happy mail!' I can tell you that it does indeed make the recipient happy ... thank you Annabel and Lee Ann!
I hope you've found something in my ramblings this week that will help and or encourage you in the coming week.
From the archives ...
It looks like your gardening is coming on a treat. Our weather drove me back inside this week. It turned cold, windy and showery. My husband joked that it was like being in a washing machine and he was right!
ReplyDeleteI finished off a couple of difficult repairs to some china ornaments. My skills are increasing and I feel quite proud of what I have achieved . It didn't cost a lot of money to save them from landfill, but it did take time. Hopefully my husband will be able to sell them on his car boot stall and they will find new homes.
Living rurally I tend to buy quite a bit of stuff online and I have had a horrible experience over the last couple of weeks after an item arrived badly broken. I immediately contacted the seller, sent photos and asked for a refund, which he refused. In the end I had to ask the site administrators to step in and help out. I got the refund (which I was legally entitled to) only to have the seller send me a nasty message suggesting that I had damaged the item myself! Some people really do have a strange outlook on life! I guess I must have been lucky before as every time I have had a problem in the past the sellers have been very quick to put matters right.
Oh I know about the eating thing. I have diverticulosis that if it gets infected then it’s diverticulitis. Well I ate too much of something Sunday and paid a huge huge price. I haven’t been that sick in years. Lesson learned
ReplyDeleteYou;re not the only one. I don't have arthritis but sugar and chocolate will cause body aches for me. Cookie
ReplyDeleteYou were smart using up those leftovers in a potpie! Forsythia always makes me happy! I have a whole row of daffodils blooming right now. The jury is still out on whether we will even bother to plant anything in light of me not being able to care for it and those pesky squirrels who will not leave anything alone.
ReplyDeleteThis morning we took our neighbors who did all that yard work here out to breakfast as a thank you. I was so glad to be able to do that within our budget. We had a great time catching up with them.
We have been happy to find a bunch of crazy grocery deals lately. We found loaves of French bread marked down to 27 cents! We grabbed three and cut them into 6 pieces each and froze them. I know from past experience not to freeze whole loaves of French bread. We have stocked and stocked at crazy low prices and as long as I have room I will continue to do it because I just don't know about the tariffs and what a month from now will look like. I am always thinking as well of people who may need help and being able to do so. One small savings I have gone back to it to ditch those baby carrots. They are hard as rocks and tasteless in comparison to the old school carrot sticks of the past. I sat down yesterday and peeled and cut a whole container of them so they are ready to eat.
The county came out and repaired our driveway where storm water had washed away the asphalt. They put a berm along the street to prevent it from happening again. We are so thankful to have this done for no cost.