cleaning

Awhile back I wrote about having too much and cleaning! Well, dear friends I now have a plan for more cleaning! I have clear direction and need to start a monthly calendar to keep me on task! In 2 yrs. I would like to have sized down the "crap" or more ladylike the "stuff" that seems at times to overtake the house! There are so many more things I would like to do besides this task, but I want to move in 2 yrs to a smaller house! That's the endgame for me. Gordon and I don't need to move further into old age with all of this! It would drive our children crazy if we died and left this mess to them to clean up. I would be ashamed to leave it! So, with that said where to start??? Well, I read a blog the other day and she said that every spring she goes from room to room, looks over the room with notebook in hand, writes down everything that room needs done. The clutter cleaned up and hauled away, painting, carpets cleaned, wallpaper stripped off, closets looking like you can find soemthing! I thought this was a great idea! So, I did it and it wasn't as painful as I expected, but now the work begins! Pray that I can do this without getting too sentimental about stuff, pray that it doesn't overwhelm me to the point I give up, pray that Gordon and I don't argue about stuff, pray that I don't lose sleep over this, pray that I can be brutal about tossing items that don't mean a hill of beans in the realm of eternity! So, this year we need "according to my notebook" to paint 2 rooms only, so that's not too bad! 3 carpets need to be cleaned and 4 closets need to be decluttered! Then there's the basement, oh boy what a chore that will be!!!!!! Don't go buy anything until you check with me and see if I have it!! I'm not kidding, I would love to bless you if I have it, whatever it is!!!LOL!!!!!Blesings!

Relish

So, I'm finally back with the relish recipe! Recipe: 10 cups of finely chopped zucchini, 4 cups of finely chopped onion(sweet), 1 green bell pepper finely chopped, 1 red pepper finely chopped, 1 hot pepper finely chopped, put in an non-reactive bowl(not metal), and cover with 5 tablespoons of pickling salt. Let this set overnight or in my case for 13 hours. Drain the vegetables and rinse, rinse, rinse, rinse them! Put the veggies in a large pot. Meanwhile, dissolve 1 tablespoon of corn starch in 2 1/2 cups of vinegar, pour that over veggies, add 4 1/2 cups of sugar, 1 tablespoon of nutmeg, 2 teaspoons of celery salt, and 1/2 teaspoon of black pepper. Let all this come to a boil, then turn down heat to a simmer and simmer for 30 minutes-45 minutes. This will be thick and pack into clean, sterile jars. I put this into pint jars for easy handling. Water bath this for 10 minutes and let it cool on the counter for 12 hours before moving to a cool, dry place. It's really good on hot dogs!!! Also, you can use your food processor to chop the veggies, but I didn't! This will make great gifts!! Blessings!!

Relish and snack

In my new pickled pantry cookbook is a recipe for "Zucchini pickle relish". So, I started it late this afternoon as it takes 12 hours in salt to get ready for pickling! I love relish on just about anything and this one comes very highly recommended! So, I had bought some zucchinis at the Farmers Market last weekend as we didn't plant any this time around! And got them all chopped up with the peppers from our garden and an onion from the store! Gordon said there is something in the garden like a squash or pumpkin, and with it raining today I didn't go check! Also, we just finished a late night snack of Greek Gods yogurt and granola! Gordon would rather have ice cream, but this is what we have for now! Blessings!

tomatoes

Gordon's garden is really producing some beautiful tomatoes for salads! I made a "big" salad(remember on Seinfeld that Elaine was always ordering a big salad??). Well, that was only part of our supper, but the main theme! The tomatoes are shaped like tear drops that we are getting now, not Roma and not grape size. But they are tasty! Blessings!

pickled salad

I found this recipe at foodiewithfamily.com last week. So, with this being my weekend off, I decided to make it. I went to the farmer's market on Saturday to get an onion and some cucumbers, as I had the peppers. So, here is the recipe: 2 cucumbers sliced into matchsticks, 1 red onions sliced very thinly and matchsticks, 2 red peppers sliced into matchsticks(I used the purple one I had on hand and 2 red ones), plus I added 1 hot hungarian pepper sliced thinly! In a saucepan combine 2 cups of water, 1 1/2 cups of sugar, 3 cups of apple cider vinegar, 8 cloves of garlic, and 1/3 yellow mustard seeds. Bring this to a rolling boil until the sugar is dissolved and then add 1 cup of ice,

let this cool till the ice is melted and pour over the veggies that have been packed into the jars. I got 3 pints and 2 jelly size jars filled with a cup left over. With the hot hungarian pepper in the mix, it's pretty hot!! But I'm thinking it will be good over beef sandwiches or pork chops or just by itself! Blessings!

new cookbook

By now most of you know that I LOVE cookbooks!!! It's my thing, others love shoes,or purses or scrapbooking, mine is cookbooks! This one I found at Menards while waiting for Gordon!! He never said a thing as he knows it's useless!! It is all on pickling! I have one on canning "Food in Jars" which was recently published, but this one is all pickling! I'm pretty excited as tomorrow is Farmers market day and I can get a few things to try out the new recipes!! I'm thinking about red cabbage apple relish, zucchini relish and kimchi! So with my new book in hand, I'll be there early to get the goods and home to pickle! Blessings!

three bean salad

Tomorrow's demo will be three bean salad that I saw on sixsistersstuff.com last week! I tweak it for the store and ended up with a pretty tasty demo! If you look at their recipe, it calls for a tomato, onion, and green pepper chopped, but I used Rotel instead as I didn't have the time for all the chopping!! I doubled the recipe for the public as they usually love the salads we have for the home cook and the recipe for them to take home! I wasn't able to take pictures of the salad, so sorry!! It is a pretty salad and would look so nice on a potluck table or picnic table! Please stop by and say "hi" to Mary as she will be the one serving it! Blessings!!

peppers

I have not taken a photo of Gordon's garden this year. It is smaller than any garden he has had before because he didn't grow any corn, pumpkins and didn't go wild with tomato plants like before(last yr he had 75 plants). But boy do we have a bumper crop of peppers and what to do with all of them! We have some Hungarian hot peppers, purple beauties, regular green peppers and a few jalapenas! I made bread salad for supper tonight with peppers, if you read any original recipes for bread salad, they don't have peppers, but I need to eat these beauties up!! Blessings!

Aren't they beautiful!!! I just love the color!!! So dark and shiny!!

peach jam

Last Thursday I bought a 1/2 bushel of Colorado peaches from Holly! They were pretty tasty and needed to have something done with them before they went bad. So Saturday morning I got up at 5:50a.m. after not falling to sleep until 12:45a.m. to work on the peaches. I got the canner up from the basement and set to work on peaches. I canned 7 pints of peaches in light syrup, 5 pints of peach jam and 2 pies for the freezer. I forget to get the jam out for breakfast or snacks or pb and j sandwiches as a general rule after I make the jam, go figure! Gordon isn't much for eating jam unless I put it on his toast or biscuits. But our neighbor Joel loves jam on crackers for a snack

and he gets quite a few jars from us throughout the year, he's a great neighbor!! So, here's to jam for Joel and Sharon!!! Blessings!

corn and black bean salsa

I bought some corn yesterday after church(from a

stand) which was very good! So, with some leftover (about 2 cups) I had made this recipe for the store demo for Friday. I had everything I needed, so that's what I did. Recipe: 2-15oz cans of whole corn, 1 can of black beans(I used a can of black bean with picled jalapeno), 1 green pepper-chopped finely, 1/4 of large onion chopped finely,a pinch of salt, a pinch of black pepper, and about 1 tablespoon of granulated garlic. Mix that together and refrig. about 3 hours before serving! YUM!!! Blessings to you all!