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.

Have you ever seen this before? Hmmm, it looks familiar, but it has been put away so long, I had forgotten how to put it together! Had to lay it all out and relearn, what went where!

These long cold and wintery evenings are a good time to see if I can get this quilt finished. I would love to see it on the bed. Then I would have to paint the bedroom walls to match or compliment the colors in the quilt. Now that would be a goal to reach for the New Year!

Betty doesn' like this one bit. "Let me in, can't you see there is some of this white stuff gettin in my hair, and my feet are cold!"

What a differnt kind of day! Whats with all this white stuff?

It hasn't even melted from the top of the greenhouse. Maybe that is a good thing. Those double walled glass panels are doing their job, I guess. It is 55 degrees inside and feels nice.

And this is what kind of day we had on Christmas Day at Lois' house. Sunny, blue sky, 45 degrees, lots of good company and good food.

We thought we would give our egg customers and a couple of special neighbors, a small treat this year. So today I made 6 pans of cinnamon rolls. When we take them their eggs tomorrow they can have fresh cinnamon rolls with their coffee! We usually go to town to deliver their eggs about 9:30 in the morning so maybe it will be time for a late breakfast and a second cup of coffee? Who doesn't like cinnamon rolls?

Green and Growing!

We finally got all the piping and all that conglomeration figured out. Turned on the water and had a couple of big water leaks, so had to turn it off and wait until we could get some new connections.

Looks like a jumble of pipes to me! Glad I didn't have to make sense of all those hoses by myself!

We eventually got all the bugs worked out with only a tiny little leak, (that we will fix). Ed had to replace the thermostat as it wouldn't work properly. Then we turned the water back on, set the thermostat, and went into the house. I had put the digital thermometer unit in there so I could moniter the temperature from inside the house. As you can see, it was 52 degrees inside the greenhouse and it was 16 degrees outside! It only varied about 3 degrees.

After a couple of days to make sure the temperature was stable, where ever I set it, on Monday, I put most of my house plants in the greenhouse. They were really suffering, in the house. Way too dark to grow nice houseplants. Today is Wednesday and I can already see a difference in them! They have more color in their leaves and are just perkier! Still have to add shelves to the right side of it, above the radiator and heating unit. Love it, love it!

Last night I woke up during the night, with Cinnamon Rolls on my mind! I wondered if that same Pan Roll recipe would work for these. After I came in from the morning feeding I mixed these up, using the mixer again. I substituted some White Whole Wheat flour for part of the white and rolled it out, spread it with softer butter, cinnamon and brown sugar. Rolled it into a log, sliced it, put it into the pan, let it raise for 30 minutes and we had hot Cinnamon Rolls for breakfast! How is that for making a dream come true? Crazy isn't it?

Things to Do On a Rainy Day

Rain, rain, rain! It rained all day yesterday, all last night and  all day today! Mud is the name of the game! So what to do on such an icky day? Make soup! I made a big pot of Hamburger Vegetable Soup, and fresh homemade rolls to go with it!

I used a recipe called Buttermilk Pan Rolls that was in my Best of Country Cooking 2003 cookbook. Since the recipe said they can be made very quickly, I thought I would give them a try for supper. They only have one rise, for 30 minutes and they were very easy to make and quick too! I would highly recommend these tasty, tender rolls. As you can see, I used my Kitchenaid Mixer, but they were hand mixed in the recipe. One other thing I did was use instant yeast instead of the Active Dry that the recipe called for, because I wanted to dump everything in at once and not have to use another bowl to soften yeast!

Rising and almost ready to bake!

These were absolutely delicious! And they went perfectly with the hot soup! By the way, I made these yesterday and this morning I made something even more tasty! And it paired perfectly with a good cup of hot coffee!