Britesea - Living the good life in rural Oregon

[Britesea]

well shoot. I took a very nice picture of tonight's dinner- Broccoli Beef with cauliflower rice, but when I tried to send it to my email I'm getting a message "problem with account setup" and I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I got the account right; got the password right... *sigh*

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Ugh! But, I'm sure it was not only beautiful - but delicious too!

 

[Britesea]

I wasn't able to get in to post here for while, but here I am.

We got a few 5 gallon buckets of apples picked; most of them need trimming from bugs that got into the core, but there's still plenty of good fruit on them. I have a good homemade spray that does a pretty good job of getting rid of the bugs, but I never got around to it this year. Part of the problem is we don't have a really good sprayer that can reach to the top of the trees. I've got 2 batches of freeze dried apples done, and I tried an experiment-- sprinkled some Ceylon Cinnamon over one tray of apple slices before I FD'd them. Experiment was successful, they are delicious for a crunchy snack. I still have 2 more buckets to go, so I will probably freeze dry some more, then dehydrate a batch, then can some chunks. We don't get a good harvest from the apples every year so it's nice to get the pantry stocked up again.

We offered one of our turkeys to the Lions Club as a money-raising raffle, to help with their various programs for the blind and deaf. The drawing is tonight and then I will call the winner to see if they want the bird butchered or live. After that, we have 2 Toms that need to be processed for us... They are huge, so I will chop them up into manageable bits and put some in the freezer, some in the freeze dryer (as dice- it doesn't work well with large chunks of meat), can a bunch as well as can up the stock and render the schmaltz. For our little family those two birds should give us about 25% of our total meat needs for the next year. I still need to empty some more room in the freezer though, so I will be canning and freeze drying stuff from there too. Wish I had the money for a second freeze dryer; they are nice, but you can't do a large amount of food at one time in just one.

While cleaning out some of the freezer yesterday, I found a lone pig heart... I don't know how old it is, but it appears to have survived long freezing unscathed. I'm not sure what to do with only 1 pig heart, so I will probably cook it in the instant pot and slice it up for sandwiches.

Cold and dry today, but the clouds look like a front is coming in; the forecast is for some sort of precipitation by Wednesday, but they aren't committing to what kind yet.

I think we will have Shepherds Pie tonight- I make the topping with mashed cauliflower and it tastes pretty good. We also have a Lions Meeting tonight, and I wanted to make some shortbread cookies for that, so I need to get going here.

 

[baymule]

Would it be too much to ask if you would share your wisdom of herbal preparations in a new thread? I want to put in a herb bed and start making teas and salves and such. If you started a thread with how-to directions, I am sure there are others here that could contribute.

 

[Britesea]

Well, there's already a spot called Natural Remedies in the forum, guess I'll go look there.

 

[Lazy Gardener]

I believe there's a thread labeled: "All things topical" that I started this summer. This is a place for folks to post their topical recipes. I started an index on the first post, so you can look at that post, then go directly to what ever post contains the recipe you want. When that index gets updated it will need to be done by Sumi or an other moderator. It would be nice to have a "sister thread" dealing with herbal remedies, there are threads with such info, but none are indexed that I know of.

Perhaps a thread dedicated to raising herbs? I'm putting in a herb bed this summer, with intent of doing more in the way of topical, cleaning products, and teas. Some of my salve ingredients are gathered from my yard or neighborhood, while others are grown in my garden. I have let mint and lemon balm grow up wild on outer borders of my "civilized" yard. Have comfrey planted in the orchard.

 

[Britesea]

woke up this morning to snow. Not a lot, but it's more than a powdered sugar sprinkle.

We delivered Miss Truly Delicious to her final home at the Gospel Mission yesterday; the two Toms are still at home. They never saw what happened to her, so they've been a little puzzled why she didn't come home last night. They were calling for her for quite a while. We don't have time to butcher them this week, with everything else going on, so I'm hoping the weather doesn't get too bad next week as we have to do the plucking outside. They will be parted out since they are both too big to go in an oven. I made gumbo Sunday night, using the very last wing from last year's tom. The one wing weighed 2 1/2 pounds, and yielded up almost 4 cups of shredded meat! That plus andouille sausage and shrimp made for a freaking delicious mess.

We helped the Lions Club put together holiday baskets last night. They used to deliver them, but there's enough of them now that they ask the beneficiaries to come get them. Two boxes went unclaimed last night, so I took one to give a friend of ours that is having some financial difficulty, and the other box was taken by someone else. So I have to deliver the box today. It's a pretty good box for being all commercial stuff- got a 13 pound turkey, 5 pounds of potatoes, boxed stuffing and canned gravy, canned cranberry sauce, green beans and corn. A frozen pie (I think it was cherry) and whipped "topping", and then stuff like a can of coffee and some hot chocolate packets, a box of cold cereal and some instant oatmeal packets, And of course a bar of soap, lol.

Pulling out the last piece of pork belly for tonight- Crispy Baked Chinese Pork Belly... yum! I think some roasted Delicata squash to go with it. and maybe some kale from the garden.

 

[wyoDreamer]

I made Chicken & Andouille Gumbo last night for supper, lol. Adding shrimp sound pretty tasty, although it was pretty good as it was. I used part of a boneless skinless chicken breast in it. The package of chicken that I defrosted was pretty big so I assumed it was multiple breasts - nope, one half breast from the monster Cornish X that I raised last fall. That was probably the last package of home grown that I have in the freezer, except the wings. After I parted out and saved the wings, DH decided he didn't want me to make snacks for his football watching anymore. GRRR, sometimes he drives me crazy.

 

[flowerbug]

I made Chicken & Andouille Gumbo last night for supper, lol. Adding shrimp sound pretty tasty, although it was pretty good as it was. I used part of a boneless skinless chicken breast in it. The package of chicken that I defrosted was pretty big so I assumed it was multiple breasts - nope, one half breast from the monster Cornish X that I raised last fall. That was probably the last package of home grown that I have in the freezer, except the wings. After I parted out and saved the wings, DH decided he didn't want me to make snacks for his football watching anymore. GRRR, sometimes he drives me crazy.

is he trying to lose some weight?

 

[Britesea]

Nevermind... make the snacks for YOURSELF