10 things about me...

...that you probably didn't want to know, anyway. Inspired by Southern Goddess' post. That chick is such a hoot! And who knew she was so tall?

1. I am the black sheep of my family. Before you feel sorry for me, please realize that I no longer have to make lame excuses to try to get out of tedious family gatherings, or suffer through said gatherings due to lack of lame excuse. They just don't invite me, which saves a ton of money at Christmas. :)

2. I get contact dermatitis from tomato plants.

3. We own five dogs, one cat, two guinea fowl, 26 chickens (three of which are roosters), innumerable rabbits, and one rat.

4. I was once offered the position of Trophy Wife. You know, the vapid little airhead that decorates the arm of the fat, balding attorney. Sadly, I am neither little, vapid, nor an airhead, and was therefore forced to decline. Ironically, I ended up with an uber hot hubby in place of the fat balding guy; I also ended up being a Trophy Wife of a different sort. All of hubby's friends are envious when he says his wife is home splitting firewood, painting, roofing, canning, etc.

5. I'd rather haul wood than go shopping.

6. I fence, shoot a bow, throw knives, use a chainsaw, a machete, and an ax, but have no idea how to change a tire.

7. I've been to Australia.

8. I'm from the south. I hate winter. I have no idea why I live in a state that has winter most of the year, but I'm thankful we opted not to move further north (we considered Maine and Alaska).

9. I am a hermit. I'd be content to never leave our property and never see anyone but my husband and children.

10. I tend to put up with too much from people. I can take all sorts of abuse with a big smile. But once the abuse is directed toward my husband or children, I can be found wearing the skin of the abuser, eating a very messy barbecue dinner.

I admit it:

I kind of enjoy the look of envy I get from people when they find out we only eat homemade bread (and not from a bread machine). That's why I've put off the bread post. Selfish, I know.

Store bread makes me gag, and forget about store buns for burgers because those are just nasty. So I'm left with living without bread or baking my own. Fortunately, it's not as difficult as people would have you think.

Homemade burger buns

Remember those commercials for rice crispy treats? The mom is sitting in the kitchen reading, the kids keep yelling from the other room to ask if they are done yet. Finally, the mom splatters herself with flour, musses up her hair, and carries the tray of treats into the other room, doing her best to look as though she has worked long and hard on treats that took no time to make. Well, my bread is a lot like that.

The dough can be used for anything: cinnamon rolls, pretzels, pizza dough, doughnuts, bread sticks, etc.

Before I give you the recipe, here are a few tips:

*I mix the dough in a big bowl, knead it there, and then spread oil in the same bowl for the dough to rise. That way, I don't have a mess on the counter.

*I buy my yeast in bulk. You can get it at Sam's Club, GFS, or even some health food stores. I get mine at GFS, about $2 a pound, which is a much better deal than packets.

*This dough gets really big, so I don't even bother to cover the bowl. If I do have to cover the dough, I use greased plastic wrap.

*I use only unbleached flour. King Arthur is my favorite, but it's expensive.

Ok, *deep breath*, here goes:

2 cups lukewarm water

3 Tbs sugar

3 Tbs yeast

Mix those together in a big bowl. Then add:

2 cups flour

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1 Tbs kosher salt

Mix well, then add additional flour, a little at a time, until you have a dough about the consistency of playdough.  This can be up to four cups, but it usually doesn't take that much.

Knead, adding sprinkles of flour if dough is still very sticky.  Try not to get dough too heavy; the less flour, the fluffier the bread.

Grease the bowl and let rise till double (or bigger). The time will vary depending on heat and humidity.

For bread: Grease loaf pans, divide dough in half, reshape and let rise. I usually let mine rise till it fills up the loaf pan. It will continue to rise while baking, so make sure you leave room between the oven racks and burners or you'll have a big mess.

If you don't have a loaf pan, you can make "Hawaiian" type loaves: separate dough in half and shape into balls, place on greased baking sheet. 

Bake at 375 for about 20-30 minutes. The baking time will vary depending on the size of the loaf pan (I have at least three sizes myself). The bigger loaves can take about 40 minutes. For best results, once the top has browned and the loaf is firm enough (after about 20 minutes), slide the loaf out of the pan and bake for another ten minutes, or until done.  Loaf should sound hollow when tapped on the bottom.

Garlic-Parmesan Bread Sticks

For bread sticks, press dough onto greased pan, brush with olive oil, sprinkle with garlic salt and Parmesan cheese, bake at 350 till browned on the bottom and top, and then brush with melted butter. You can also make them with cinnamon and sugar instead of garlic and cheese.

*Note:  Homemade bread is of course free of the tons of extra preservatives that store bread has. Therefore, it won't keep as long.  Store leftovers in the fridge or freezer.  An extra loaf is great to freeze and then slice up later for Texas Toast.  Just coat with butter or olive oil and garlic and broil til lightly browned.  

Let me know how yours turns out!!

I guess I have to face it...

...fall is creeping in. The trees are changing, the temps are dropping, and I'm leaning toward a fall menu. I still think it's early, though. Which kind of figures...I'm starting on the wood earlier than ever, so of course winter will be early. ugh.



I made a nice pot of harvest stew for lunch today:

Made from tomatoes, zucchini, carrots, green beans, quinoa, and herbs, all from our garden. It tastes a lot like minestrone soup. I'd share the recipe, but I just sort of tossed the stuff into the pot and didn't measure anything. It was good, though.

Some days you are the snake...

...and some days you are the toad.

Keeeesssss Meeee!!!!

C'mon..just a leeetle smooch? I'm really a prince, I swear!

Prince Charming and his cohorts are recently tailless and still thriving in Little Sis' tadpole paradise, aka the kiddie pool.

We came back from vacation to find the kiddie pool a lovely shade of green. Instead of hitting it with about a zillion pool chemicals, Little Sis opted to open a home for wayward tadpoles, having found a whole slew of them in a very shallow puddle.

Mosquitoes decided it would also be a lovely home for their little wrigglers to hatch, so of course we had to do something about that. Not knowing for sure if mosquito 'dunks' would harm the tadpoles, we opted for something a bit more...organic.

Just your run of the mill goldfish. We got 10 of them for less than three bucks, and by the next morning they had completely wiped out the mosquito larvae. I think there are still three or four of the fish living in the 'pond'.

It's been a fun science project. We've been to the library and checked out all of their tadpole books, as well as the frog field guides. I think we have about four different types in the pond.

And now...
I'm off to deal with this...

And this....

That's one peck of cherry tomatoes! I saved this bag from my last apple purchase at the Farmer's Market, since I really didn't know how to measure out a peck all on my own. lol It's about 10 lbs of tiny tomatoes.

Not Ready! Notreadynotreadynotready!!

Dear Mother Nature, Father Time, and the Channel 10 Weatherman,

What the heck!? Ha ha very funny...NOT! I don't know whose idea of a joke this was, but I'm not not NOT laughing!!

In case you jokers haven't noticed, it's the friggin' middle of August!! It is way too early for this sort of tomfoolery!! Leaves change color in fall, not in the hottest part of summer!! Thanks to you guys, I'm frantically trying to get the wood cut, as well as the garden harvested and the canning done. I look like a bee on speed!

And while I have your attention, make with the rain, already! It's downright crunchy outside!!

The Country Wife Fitness Program

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Leave the kiddies with our experienced nursery staff!

Be sure to stop by our Organic Fruit Bar for a quick snack!

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Children of the Corn

The sweet corn is done! And by done, I mean picked, shucked, blanched, cut off the friggin' cob 'cause my freezer is almost full, and frozen. Done done done! yay!!

Picking the corn was a lot more fun that I had anticipated. We cracked a lot of jokes. I waved around a cornstalk and yelled, "I think I'm being stalked." Both girls said, "Mom, that's so corny." I said, "I can't hear you, please speak into my ear." *waves ear of corn*

Yeah, lame, I guess, but it was fun. We all giggled and got itchy from the corn. You just can't buy that kind of fun. lol

This doesn't really look like a lot of corn, but it seemed to multiply as it was shucked. lol

I ended up refilling this box four times.

Our corn plot was only about 20 x 30, so this was a pretty good harvest. Especially good when you consider that the whole thing cost me about $4 worth of seed corn, and corn is going for .25 an ear here.

Oh, and of course this doesn't include all those ears we ate as soon as they were ready, as well as the ones the girls were eating while we were harvesting...raw, fresh, right out of the field.

I think we'll at least double our corn plot next year...maybe even triple it. It is a really good return when you realize that you get at least one ear of corn from each kernel you plant. Of course that means I have to get a bigger freezer...

I'll never get tired of living in the country

Today there was a deer watching me work in the garden. I ran inside to get the camera, but when I came back, he was gone.

While I was looking for the deer, an indigo bunting buzzed my head.

When I woke up this morning, there was a red squirrel sitting outside my window eating sunflower seeds.

As I was putting up the hay this afternoon, I watched hummingbirds and butterflies in the field, saw a groundhog run into the neighbor's field, and nearly fell into a rabbit burrow. lol

I spent a couple of hours this afternoon picking wild blackberries.

Some mornings, I have coffee while walking through the woods... in my pj's.

Right now, I'm listening to crickets, frogs, and katydids.

I really don't think I will ever get tired of this.

The 'net hates me

This has been my week for internet problems.

First, notice my counter is gone? I couldn't get to my blog, the message said IE couldn't access it, abort, etc. So I googled that and found that it was caused by my counter, even though it hadn't happened before. I deleted my counter and everything was fine.

Then I started having problems with my ISP. We are probably one of the few people left on the planet with dial-up. For some reason, my pc refused to dial my ISP. So I went around it, logged on, downloaded the newest software, deleted the old software, installed the new stuff, and voila! my pc dialed my ISP with no problem...almost.

The next issue was that once online, I couldn't get my browser windows to open. Not even by clicking IE. I somehow accidentally found that by turning off one of the processes, the windows would pop right open. Now I am in contact with my ISP to find out what the heck is causing that.

So...here I am. Exhausted. Someone explain to me why canning is so tiring? I made bread and butter pickles tonight. Tomorrow I'll make some more, but using zucchini (of which I have exactly one bajilliondy seven). I'm hoping to make zucchini chips, and blanch and freeze whatever is left over.

I also have an entire wicker laundry basket of green beans to process. I think it weighs about 30 lbs. :/

Anyway, the point of this post was to let everyone know I'm still here. I have some great recipes to share but that will have to wait till I'm awake. Also a few wino updates. :)

Bean feast