Pecan Pie Bars

Rachel, this is for you. I don't have a scanner and wanted you to see the photo of these bars.

I hope it works for you.

I Couldn't Resist!

I came across this recipe in one of my Make Ahead cookbooks and it sounded so different that I just had to try it! It is something like a Shoo fly pie, but with fruit instead of molasses.

I used fresh strawberry's instead of purchased frozen ones,

and a one layer cake mix, such as Jiffy Mix. I think if I make it again, I might use a yellow cake mix instead of the white.

Mix the cake mix up, pour it into your unbaked crust, and gently pour your strawberry's on top,

bake and enjoy the lovely aroma in your kitchen,

Let cool at least one hour, and serve with vanilla ice cream! Yummy! I kind of compared it to a strawberry cobbler taste, but different and well worth making again!

My Worse Nightmare-An Escapade

Last Sunday, well I guess it was already Monday, Missy woke us up barking, at 4:10 Am. We could see headlights in the driveway. Ed got up and peered out the window and a sheriff's car was in the drive way. He went to the door and the sheriff said there were three horses out on the road and one of them had been hit by a car. We scrambled into some jeans and shoes. I got outside first and asked the sheriff, who was standing on the porch waiting for us if the horse was on its feet, and he pointed to the area of the barn and asked if those were our horses. I hurried toward the barn and the horses were out of their lot, and were standing up near the run-in shed. (They had come back to the barn on their own, just ahead of the sheriff. I grabbed halters and walked up to them and caught Maddie and Katie, and Solomon followed us down to the barn. Katie kept pawing the ground, first with one foot then the other. She was holding her head at an angle, not the normal way. Maddie had a bad scrape all the way down her back leg, from the knee to the ankle, (likely from getting into barbwire fencing that was in the grass, where they had been), where all the hair had been scraped off. Solomon had no injuries at all. I could tell that Katie was in pain, even though I couldn't find anything visible on her. I called the vet, waking them up, I'm sure. I explained the situation to the vet when he called back, telling him there were no broken bones but that Katie wouldn't stop pawing and he said he would come right out. It was almost and hour before he arrived. (They are 30 minutes away). He examined her and the others and gave them all Banamine, a painkiller. He found soreness on her left ribcage and a stiff neck. He was concerned about them colicing, (a bad horsey tummy ache) from both stress and eating all that grass. They haven't been out on grass for 8 years! He suggested I stay home from work and watch them for the day. So I did, checking on them about ever 30 minutes all day. Katie just stood in the corner of the shed, all day, walking very slowly when she came to get a drink. She was eating and drinking, just sore and stiff. 
   That evening after supper someone knocked on the door. When I answered it, there was a man standing there, and asked how the horse was. I asked him if he is the one that hit her and he said yes. So this is his story...
Said he was going home from work, and he saw what he thought were deer walking down the middle of highway. He slowed down, to about 30 MPH, and said to his buddy that was with him, THOSE ARE HORSES! And just then Katie who was on the other side of the road, jumped out of the ditch right in front of him and he couldn't avoid hitting her. Then he called the sheriff with his work radio as cell phones don't work around here. (This all happened just pass the fire station, that is near our driveway). The impact bent his bumper a little bit, broke a headlight, and cracked the grill on his pickup truck. Katie has a place on her ribs, about 20 inches long where the hair appears cut. She is still improving, as I saw her trot part of the way back up to the shed after coming down for water. She still does a lot of just standing in the corner. She was given a painkiller dose for about 4 days, but now she is off of them.
   The next day, when I was leaving for work, I drove up the road a little way and there was horse poop, quite a ways, so they had been out for several hours, most likely. We could see tracks where they had been down the back hayfield.
   Thank the Lord that our words are like a shield. This could have been a real tragedy, both for us and for that driver.  

This all came about because a gate was accidentally left open. A lesson not to be soon forgotten. 
This whole episode still makes me shake to think about.

What is this? Ginseng?

Ruth, can you tell me what this is? I stumbled on this in the backyard, right in the edge of the woods. I wondered if it was ginseng. I've never seen it growing to know what the plants look like.

Field of Flowers

Saw this scene on my way home from Mom and Dads, a few days ago. I just couldn't pass it up as it was so colorful.

Yummy and Ingenious!

I made a cherry pie and had some left over pie crust. What to do with it? Hmmm. I had recently seen a recipe for homemade Pop Tarts so I rolled them out...

filled them with mulberry jelly...

baked them, drizzled them with some thin frosting, and they were so Yummy! Ed loved them!

So what is this? Well, Ed wanted to make a bacon press, to keep the bacon flat as it cooks instead of it curling up all over the pan. He didn't like the ones you can buy as they were too small to do the job in his opinion. So...

he made one! He took a cast iron frying pan and cut the bottom out of it, and smoothed it up, put a handle in it, and there you have it! A bacon press that is heavy enough, big enough and works perfectly! Now, isn't he just so ingenious? He sure is!

Lois, this is for you. Remember the bleeding heart plants you gave me? They are blooming this spring!

And do you remember the little lilac that you gave me? I'm sorry to say, it sat in that bucket for most of the year. I finally planted it, and it has lots of blooms on it. Thank you!

Pickle Pie and and Shoo Fly too!

I came across this recipe on the Farm Bell recipe blog, and just had to try it. I blind baked the crust.

then browned the ground beef, with onion and garlic.

Chop your dill pickles, and add a couple of other ingredients,

bake, eat and enjoy. We both liked it, even though Ed thought it might be even better with a little less pickles. If you like cheese burgers, I think you would like it too!

And this morning, I was craving shoo fly pie, so I just made one! In the microwave, of course. It isn't perfect, the crust didn't get as cooked as I would have liked, but it has the wonderful, aroma and taste of Shoo Fly Pie! and that is what counts!

 

 

Cooked!!

This lovely begonia had grown to twice this size and had about 10 flower stalks on it and it was beautiful! Just covered with blooms!

This was the geranium that Sarah had given me and it was covered with blooms, after having no blooms on it at all during the whole winter. Then...tragedy!  Ed and I went to visit his dad one Sunday a week ago, and all of a sudden, I remembered that neither of us had opened the greenhouse that morning. We were at least an hour a way from home by the time I remembered it.

Well, it was 80 degrees out side and a clear blue sky, so at home, in the greenhouse, it was over 120 degrees! I think the min/max thermometer said 127 degrees. Well, when we arrived home at 5:30pm...it was too late for most of them. They even smelled cooked!

Most of them looked like they had boiling water poured over them!

This airplane plant was so large and lush and just beautiful! It had two tiers of baby plants. The pots themselves were very hot to touch, so I filled the water can with cold water and just flooded everything! Now, after a week, I can finally see all the damage as it took that long for some of the plants to finally quit wilting and turning black. I think most of them will eventually put out new shoots as there is some green still there, but time will tell. So now we wait and watch and water!

Fuffy Little Butts!

We have had this incubator for a few years and have never used it before. We bought it used and mostly just let a broody hen hatch our chicks or we bought them from Rural King already hatched. But we don't have a hen that wanted to go broody, so we used this artificial 'hen' this time. I have the towels wrapped around it to keep the temperature more stable inside.

We saved eggs for nine days and put them inside on the automatic turner. The wire you see here is the thermometer probe.

The temperature was fairly stable, it would go up and down about 3 to 4 degrees. We let it run with no eggs in it for a week, until we could determine how it would work. Once we were satisfied with its performance, we added the eggs, then...just have patience!

Here is my homemade candler. I candled the eggs on day 5 and 13. You could see the embryo on day 5 just kicking and wiggling inside of the shell! On day 13, half of the egg was full of chick, but you could still see movement.

This was on day 20, yesterday. You can see that pipping has started to take place. This was at 8:45 AM and the first chick hatched out of its shell at 8:25PM.

Then, nothing much happened, for hours. There was a little movement here and there, but nothing much.

This wet and bedraggled little bundle, was the first to exit its shell.

I got up in the night, (didn't go to bed until about 12:00AM) and the second one had just hatched.

Here is the last one to finally make it out, at 8:30 AM this morning!

All nine of them HATCHED! We are so blessed! 100% hatch is unusual. Aren't they just too cute?

Especially those FUFFY LITTLE BUTTS!!!

Gittin' er Done

After 3 years of not working on this quilt, I thought I should do something with it. So for the last month, I have been working on it pretty regularly. Little by little, I will get it finished!

You probably can't see them but there are 3 or 4 major boo boo's in this photo. I had to take about 4 row apart and redo several blocks. That was not fun. It is what I have been doing this past week. Finally  got each one back like it should be, so....

here is the top of the Garden Twist Quilt almost ready to layer the batting and the back together. It is supposed to resemble a garden trellis. So now the fun begins!

Buddy, (he finally has a name) loves this ball. It is a hard plastic, so he can't destroy it. He will chew up anything that he can. Gave him a new tennis ball made just for dogs and within 15 minutes it was in pieces and now he plays with the pieces, throwing them around the yard and chasing them. He worked on trying to reach his ball for quite a long time after dropping it behind that board. Then gave it up to play with a stick for a while, but he loves his ball.

Well, I just had to try that recipe for the Lemon Rolls from the last entry on my blog. I halved the recipe so there wouldn't be as many of them to eat, and boy, were they good! I made a couple of little additions to the recipe. I added a tablespoon of sugar to the dough and a 1/4 teaspoon of Lemon extract to the egg and milk mixture.

I used a 6 or 7 inch square Corning Ware pan to bake them in. They were so tasty and lemony and just so goooood! Ed liked them too! So make them and have them with a hot, fresh cup of coffee! These were perfect, but sometimes things just don't turn out so well...

Kids, don't try this at home! I made a pumpkin cake in the microwave and it was so pretty and looked so good! Then when I cut into it, it was so dry it was inedible, even with cream cheese frosting on it! I think mostly because I over cooked it. The recipe was in a microwave cookbook, but was for a 1970's microwave. I tried to adjust the time and the power setting for the newer, faster cooking microwaves, but didn't get it right. Oh well. Sometimes they work out, and sometimes they don't!

Do they look as 'snug as a bug in a rug'? Since there is three cats that live on the front porch, one of these boxes usually has two cats in it. I've put a fuzzy rug inside and they spend a lot of time inside when it is so cold outside. That is Momma Kitty in the top box and she doesn't get along with the barn cats, and that is why they live on the porch.  Those two black ones are her own kittens, all grown up. They are Bart, male, and Betty, female.They are both bigger than their mother.

Mennonite Girls Can Cook: Lemon Pull-Apart

Mennonite Girls Can Cook: Lemon Pull-Apart: These lemon pull aparts are easy to make and are a satisfying snack for that afternoon coffee break or a great addition to your brunch menu...

My Cheeks Are Freezing!

My cheeks are freezing!! Didn't want to go outside, but with three dogs, somebody has to take them out to potty! While I was already in the frigid north, I figured I would clean stalls and fill hay bags so I wouldn' t have to do it later. So I did, and with a 25 MPH wind whistling through the barn, down my coat collar, and freezing my fingers, it is a wonder, more than my cheeks weren't frozen! You can figure out which ones!!

Now, after all that, I found a recipe that you just have to make!! These Mennonite Girls Can Cook! 



This looks soooo good! Let me know if you make it.