Egg Nog and Turkey

Two things my family has been talking about. 1) that yummy turkey, wish there was still some left. 2) when are you buying more egg nog? don't make it, the home-made is gross and lumpy.

So, for number one. The turkey really is awesome. And since my friend Betsy asked for it, I'm sharing!

Best Turkey Ever
Collect these supplies:
2 big bags (I use kitchen garbage bags, tried others, they broke)
Ice Packs
5-gallon bucket or medium-sized cooler
One Turkey - I've used up to 19 pounds

Combine these brining ingredients in a large kettle - bring to boil, stirring until sugar dissolves.
2 quarts unsweetened apple juice
2 1/2 cups brown sugar
1 cup kosher salt
4 ounces fresh gingerroot, peeled and thinly sliced
15 whole cloves
6 garlic cloves, crushes
3 bay leaves

Stir in 3 oranges, quartered and squeezed
Turn off heat.
Pour in 3 quarts cold water and let your brine cool so you can handle it.

Prepare turkey (rinse and inspect), then carefully double-bag it and set into your vessel (5-gallon bucket or cooler). Find some children who can hold the bag open while you pour the brine over the turkey - without dropping the bag and losing any!!

Tie the bag tightly and either put in a cool place or pack with ice-packs. I work hard to get the turkey submerged in liquid so I don't have to touch it for 18-24 hours. If it isn't submerged, you'll want to flop it over mid-way so all that turkey gets good contact.

18-24 hours later, gather your volunteers so that you can haul the bird into your sink for a good rinse. Discard all brining ingredients. Pat dry, rub with oil (mine got a coconut oil massage), place in favorite baking vessel. Cover for first half of the baking. Brined birds cook faster - so expect that and check the internal temperature about 2/3 thru your cooking time.

Let bird rest for at least 15 minutes before slicing. Try not to ruin your appetite by eating all the turkey as you slice it. Oh yum.


As for eggnog. We are eggnog lovers. We buy it thick and dilute with whole milk - b/c that makes it last longer and deludes us into thinking it's healthier. I tried to make my own last year. Yuck. Lumpy - something to do with the egg-cooking. Raw is too thin and frothy - also yuck.

But we had victory this week. Yum. Not quite as sweet as store-bought, but that can be remedied.

4 cups of milk (save 1/2 C to dilute egg yolks)
4 egg yolks, well beaten, stirred into saved 1/2 C milk (save whites)
2/3 cup white sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
Heat on medium, stirring well until it thickens to coat back of spoon.
Remove from heat to cool.

When cool, whip egg whites to soft-peaks. Fold whites into cooled eggnog (adds great thickness).
Add vanilla and nutmeg to taste. Add half/half or whole milk get desired thickness (I used raw cream - oh my!) Refrigerate until serving!

Baked Oatmeal Breakfast

When Anna was born, my Mom baked a giant batch of this baked oatmeal and she served it to me throughout the day. Anna was born at home and one of my lasting memories of that most-lovely time is of my own Mom - she'd appear in my bedroom doorway with yummy food and a big grin. My Mom got to catch Anna - isn't that cool?!

Baked Oatmeal Breakfast - this came from my dear Aunt Jackie in Maine. I love it.

2 C oatmeal (old-fashioned)
1/3 C brown sugar
1/3 C raisins
1 t baking powder
1/2 t cinnamon

1 1/2 C milk
1/2 C applesauce (unsweetened, homemade or not)
1 egg
1 T oil

Combine dry, stir in wet, pour into oiled 8" square dish. Bake at 375 for 20-25 minutes.

OR, this doubles nicely into a 9x13. My mom always added finely chopped (or ground) almonds, dried cherried, chopped apples.
You can also omit the sugar and substitute 1T more applesauce for the oil.

Serve hot with milk (and syrup or sugar).

Corn Bread we like to eat

You may have noticed that I like making my own version - whether it be my own chicken, my own vinegar. I like making my own. But we really like Jiffy cornbread and the recipes I've tried are too blahhh (I like it sweet and moist and yellow). So - I googled "cornbread like jiffy's" and then made it my own. Here's how I like it. FYI - I do fresh-grind my own flour - I've also done popcorn and that makes it even better - but usually I buy the cornmeal (b/c it is too loud in the vitamixer and we don't have enough ear-coverage for every kid).

This is a giant recipe - I make it in my big casserole dish (10xsomething)- we devour it at dinner, then have leftover for breakfast.

1 C cornmeal
3 C flour (I use equal parts fresh-ground hard white and soft white wheat berries)
1/3 C sugar (usually brown)
2 Tablespoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2/3 C oil
1/3 C butter (can play with this fats ratio - but I like it with at least 1/3 butter)
4 eggs, well-beaten
2 1/4 C milk (I rarely use plain milk. I prefer homemade kefir or buttermilk or clabbered raw milk - today I used mostly clabbered but needed a bit more so added broth!)
(optional - can add 1 C fresh or from-frozen corn for some texture)

Combine all dry ingredients. Pour wet on top, gently stir (it will begin to bubble, so don't over-stir). Pour into oiled casserole dish. Bake 350 for 40-50 minutes - mine is always browned on edges before it is done in the middle - browned is yum.

Season for finishing

This is the season for finishing things.  The trees are finishing their leaves, the garden is finishing its fruit, I am finished cleaning the house (aaah! that was so funny.  I crack myself up.)  Get ready, I should blog more often.  This post is heavy-laden.

Finishing the Apple Cider Vinegar.  I keep blowing through my bottles of Bragg's ACV because I add a tablespoon per gallon of water for the dog, chickens and rabbits.  I think it helps them fend off icky things - who knows.  But I was about to give up on my dosings b/c the good, raw stuff is too expensive. Here's my attempt at making it myself - easy, not hardly stinky.  I'm sold.  I got seconds from the orchard.  They aren't organic (which is bad b/c any pesticides will keep them from making good fermenty vinegar) but since they were the ugly ones, it's likely they got little spray (hence their ugliness).  So we put a half-bushel's worth of cores and peels into that 5-gal bucket, topped it with warm water and banded a thin dishtowel over the top to keep out fruit flies.  It sat in my kitchen for 3 weeks (I am impatient - 6 wks seems ideal), then I strained it out and filled my jars with that appley sour liquid!!  I had to do it, we were out of Bragg's.  But since I think it has more vinegar potential, I saved the mushy scraps, jarred it up with more water and towel-lids, and made a pretty vinegar display next to my mudroom sink.

 Finishing the soup beans.  We didn't weed and we didn't spray and we didn't water.  Hmm, not ideal.  But still we got a load of beans.  We planted 4 kinds:  Black Turtle, Calypso, Jacob's Cattle, and Pinto. We hardly got any of the latter two - maybe because the cows got out one night and munched them?  Don't know.   I do know that this is not cost-effective.  We do this because our daddy thinks it is cool that we can grow soup beans.  We do this to also prove that a lot of great learning/school can occur while one person reads aloud and the rest shell beans.  Also lots of hilarity.  Much more effective than trying to do school while canning tomatoes.

11yr old Peter's hand.

These little hands are cuter, Anna is our best sorter and also our best bean-feeler.

Two cheerful girl shellers.

This is how we dry them on towels on our deck.  Sometimes the shells burst open and the beans fly.

Finishing the hay drama.  We bought a very old, very used set of hay equipment.  I'm still baffled by which is the rake, the crusher-thingy, the cutter-part.  No clue.  I only know I was whispering the h-a-t-e word because my husband was so heart-achy as he and his farm-friends struggled to make the darn equipment work!!  This grass-fed business is hard when it doesn't rain.  So, here is a picture of a beautiful little steer named Tank who is watching his farm-daddies toss 43 beautiful bales of our OWN hay into our barn.

Finishing the chickens.  (warning, don't scroll further if you don't like to eat chicken) We are almost done with our first grandiose chicken raising.  We raised 48 cornish cross and 30 color range meat chickens in pasture-pens.  The spent their first 3 weeks inside (safe and warm), then went out to meet the world of fresh grass and bugs.  Twice every day we (mostly me) hauled jugs of water (ACV included!) up to the pasture, scooted the pens to fresh grass, and refilled their water and feed.  We loved those chickens.  They loved me the most.  We sold all but 5 cornish cross - the color range go in 2 weeks, I'm trying to remember not to sell all of them.  The goal was to pay for our own freezer-filling and make a little money.  I kept forgetting about the freezer-filling when our friends were cheerfully asking if they could buy some.  Next year, we'll just need to do more!!

Ruby is a very skillful chicken-deliverer.  See she's not even worried that the chicken is about to reach up and peck her hand.

I like butchering chickens.  It is simple and satisfying to see your clean bird, ready to eat.  I think it's appropriate that we know what our food ate, where it came from and who made it ready-to-eat.  This is right and good.  Anna and I talked to the Cornish Cross the night before butcher.  We agreed they were probably very excited for their big day - fulfilling the purpose for which they were created.  Anna says she will butcher when she gets bigger.  For now, she swings with her cousins.  We had 7 adults and 15 kids at our house "helping" on butcher-day.  No wonder we think it's fun.

The super-awesome chicken plucker.  See all those feathers?!  This is the men's department - they bleed, dip, pluck and pull. 

This is my table - I like to eviscerate.  It is a personal challenge to get all the inside out  in one piece.  See me concentrating?!  Most of the kids tried this - it's so cool to figure out their organs and see how their system is different from ours.
Chickens are beautifully-made creatures - even these hybrids.

This is my farmer.  He thinks the beard is good camo for bow-season.  We agree to disagree.  I love it when he looks at me like that because it means he thinks my jokes are funny.  This is a serious compliment.

This pen has 7 color range roosters.  These chickens aren't hybrids with giant breasts - they are happy normal birds that don't tip over because of the afore-mentioned giant breast.  They do normal things like crow and scratch for bugs and have beautiful feathers. This one is peaking up at me to say, "water-lady, where did you take my water?"  

Hot lips

After bragging about my awesome hot sauce, oh so tasty and easy to simmer up for my beloved, well, I did wash that pot.  Evidently I hadn't used it since.  Tonight as Isaac faithfully scooped the tender, hot applesauce into a jar, he glopped some on the counter.  I said flippantly, "I just wiped that counter, go ahead, lick it!".  He did.  Next thing I know he's in the bathroom washing off his tongue.  "Blech, something weird was on that counter, Mom."  I didn't believe him.
I finally found the lid for his jar, licked my applesauce finger clean (it is the preferred way to clean around here!) and aaack!!!!  We have a problem.  Spicy, Hot Applesauce.

Oh, how I hope that my pot is not forever-spicy.  Hope Kevin enjoys that applesauce I, uh, made him.  Hope he sees my label when he opens the frig in the early morning.

Do you like this picture of my frig?  This is my through-the-desert frig (not dessert, though it's useful for that too) - it is lasting forever, like the Israelites' sandals did through 40 years in the desert.  That green stuff is the jello for tomorrow's cell model.  The blocks-o-cheese are part of my lovely bulk purchases from my favorite Mennonite grocers!

Salsa-licious

That's a funny title, makes my kids laugh.  Salsa-licious!  And this is a funny post because I haven't tasted it yet!!  It's too spicy - would be dangerous.  But, this salsa wins because it isn't salsa-soup - it's beautiful, lovely - so it wins.

Ruby, my expert tomato-dipper.

My sweet, beloved friend Jess H gave me this recipe.  She makes it every year.  We laugh, because we both like adaptable recipes.  It is essential that substitutions can be made.  We have too many kids to go to the grocery store just because we want to make salsa!!  Substitute freely!!

Salsa

5 gallon bucket of tomatoes (who cares what kind!)  Peel, core and quarter after doing the hot-water-dip-trick.  Jess says you needn't quarter - just squeeze them with your hand as you plop them in the giant pot.  To reduce wetness of salsa, consider squeezing the tomatoes a bit for extra seeds and juice to go into your chicken bowl (oh, this is a compost bowl - my chickens love tomatoes).  Start the tomatoes cooking on low/med heat while you get busy chopping the rest:

6 banana peppers

4-6 green peppers

4-5 medium onions

garlic

cilantro

hot peppers to taste

Add above to tomatoes and stir well.

I used the "garden" method of picking every ready pepper in my garden, donning gloves and chopping them ALL up.  Hence the too-spicy for anyone but husband results.  Jess says hers is always "mild".  That's how I'll do the next batch so the rest of us can also munch.   

  

Before the tomatoes boil, carefully spoon out about 1 C of liquid into a bowl so that you can stir in

1 C cornstarch

1 C apple cider (or white) vinegar

1/2 C sugar

2 T salt

If your reserved liquid is too hot, you'll get lumps.  (I prefer to have less liquid in my salsa, not more, so you don't want to add water just so you can dissolve the cornstarch.)  Stir, stir, stir as you add the cornstarch mixture to your big pot and watch it thicken!!  Woo-hoo!!

Now for the illegal part.  Do not tell the FDA.  Quick, heat up another pot with water enough for a quart jar (or whatever kind you'll use) to lay down in and be submerged.  Get a cute, helpful girl (at least 7 1/2 years old, per Ruby) to help you with that fun magnet wand that retrieves the canning lids from the hot water.  Submerge your first jar and lid (being careful not to splash the cute girl perched on the stool nearby).  Fill your hot jar with your hot salsa, put on the hot lid, screw on the ring, place the jar upside down on your counter for a beautiful display of salsa.  Leave it alone until tomorrow, it will be all sealed and ready for winter-time munchings!!  This made 11 quarts for me - I used about 5 gallons of tomatoes and about 1 gallon bag of hot peppers and 3 green peppers.

Sticky neck

One of my favorite things about cooking with Anna is my sticky neck.

She helps me mix and knead and measure by kneeling on a tall stool.  Or she climbs up to sit on the counter - precarious with my piles being scooted off by her wiggly self.  We just finished mixing the granola up and she was licking the "splatula" clean and scooting a pile of books off the counter.  She screeched because I forgot to give her a bowl-full of raw granola (always her preferred way to eat it) - but I made it up to her with the whole bag of raisins instead.

Who, me?  I'm not sticky!

Reaching back to clutch at a knot in my neck, waiting for the timer to ring for the granola, I discover a smear of sticky brown sugar and honey on my neck.  Anna loves me so well.  It's so nice to feel the print of her sticky baby fingers on me.  They are losing their soft pudge and today she counted all the way up to 9 cups of oats (well, except for missing 6).

Better Bread

I decided about a year ago to be crazy and grind all our own flour.  That is a radical way to do a whole food (as in that whole wheat berry) - but it's working for us.  So we rarely eat foods made with processed flour - I just bake bread a couple times a week.  We buy wheat berries from the local mennonite grocer and I grind flour before I bake.  I've been getting tired of my old-standby bread recipe, so today I tested a recipe that my cousin Amy in Maine bakes.  And it worked beautifully with my fresh flour (and my typical substitutions).

Honey Oatmeal Bread
1 C oats (I use old fashioned)
2 t sea salt
2 C boiling water
2 T butter
1/2 honey (I used unpacked 1/2C brown sugar)
Mix these 5 ingred together and let stand 1 hr, @ 50 minutes combine 3t yeast and 1/2 warm water.  Let yeast mixture stand for 10 minutes, then mix into oat mixture.
Add 4-6 C flour (I used hard white wheat, Amy uses King Arthur) until dough is workable.
Knead 20 minutes (nearly impossible for me to patiently knead this long!)
Let rise until double (about 1 hr), punch down and roll into 2 loaves.  Place in bread pans and let rise to double.

Bake 375 for 25 minutes!  (delicious with cinnamon, sugar and raisins rolled into loaf - I bet fresh herbs would be awesome too)

Yogurt: the end of store cereal, Part 2

Yogurt!!  Oh, love of my heart, yogurt.  I love this almost as much as homemade granola.  And this sealed the deal: the end of store cereal AND the end of store yogurt!!  What delight: stir in honey, fruit, granola, jam, cookies, or bliss plain.

So, I forget where the inspiration originated.  But this site is where I decided to go for it (it's just bonus that this girl is Azerbaijani)- and this is where I go when I forget the simple process (like when our power is out for a week and then we are on vacation for a week and I forget how to make yogurt, vacuum or do laundry).  Her method is fool-proof, mine is a little faster.  I do have trouble following instructions, I read for content and intent - I'm not hung-up on details ;)  SOO, I will trust that if you are a skeptic, you'll read her instructions.   The only thing tricky about yogurt is remembering it - if you leave it to get too hot or too cold, you just made cheese.  Which is also yummy.

Yogurt at home
1 gallon whole milk with no hormones added 
4 T plain yogurt (from store or last batch - greek or regular - just has to be alive - I've even scraped it from the top of a Dannon fruit-on-the-bottom) (hint: for scaredy-cats do 1/2 gal with 2 T)
whisk
candy thermometer

Choose your heaviest sauce pan - I like my big dutch oven that is heavy-bottomed and has a big heavy lid.  I want it to heat evenly and hold the heat.  Set your "starter" yogurt on the counter so it isn't so cold.  Pour gallon of milk into pan that is on your biggest stove-top burner.  Turn on heat as high as you can without scalding the milk at the bottom of the pan.  Stir with a whisk so it heats evenly.  Watch the temperature - turn it off and remove lid at 180 degrees.

If you are patient, turn on your stove's fan, whisk a bit and keep checking temp until it reaches 115.  If you are me, put some cold water and 2 trays of ice cubes into a plugged sink.  Set the open pan on top of the ice cubes and watch the temp fall!  Set it back on stove-top, or nearby (it's a heavy pot, be careful for sloshing) at 115 degrees.  Add some warm milk to your 4T starter to warm it up a bit.  Whisk that together then pour that into your full pan.  Whisk together side-to-side so the happy little cultures get to spread out and get busy.  Put your lid back (I store my hot lid in my little microwave so it stays warmer), drape a clean-ish kitchen towel over the top and either set it outside (because it's so very hot right now) or into your oven with the light on.  Your goal is cozy milk (as close to 110 as you can - so whisk that starter in quickly), for at least 6 hrs - 12 is lovely.

If you start this as you wash dinner-dishes, you'll have it done before you put the kids to bed.  Leave it in the oven until you are getting breakfast for the kids - it'll be ready!  My favorite is lifting the lid, seeing a nice big crack form in the yogurt as I jostle it to the counter.  I love scooping it into mason jars (or re-used spaghetti sauce jars) and watching the whey puddle up.  It will be firmer after it's cold in the frig.  You'll be amazed at the delicate sweetness as you lick your spoon.  I love to see the row of jars in the back of my frig - it is good for a month - only gets slightly more "plain" tasting as it ages.

My only "fail" was the time I tried it with raw milk.  Don't know what I did wrong, but I the morning unveiling revealed curds and whey?  I put it in my frig in cheese cloth, salted it, poured on a tiny bit of fresh cream and enjoyed the awesome old-fashioned cottage cheese.  Yum.  If it is too cold to culture properly, you'll need a gentle heating to 110 so you don't kill your yogurt cultures.  Or call them a helpful acid and make ricotta.  Yum again!

Questions?

Zucchini Relish

This is Grandma Earlene's famous zucchini relish recipe.  It is deliciously better than any relish from the store and another perfect way to use lots of zucchini - even the enormous ones.

10 C packed shredded zucchini (up to 12 C)
1 large onion chopped/shredded
5 T salt
combine above ingred and let stand overnight (at least 12 hrs), drain liquid, rinse with cold water, squeeze out all the water you can

1 green pepper, shredded
1 red pepper, shredded
can add carrot for more color
4 C sugar
2 1/2 C vinegar (reg white)
1t tumeric
1T ground dry mustard
1t celery seed

Add above ingred to zucc/onion mix in large stockpot.  Bring to boil, simmer 3 minutes, pack into pint jars with 1 inch head space.  Process in hot water bath 10 minutes.

I use my food processor to shred all the veggies.  I also have added hot peppers, to my husband's delight.  Refrigerate after opening.  This makes a great gift - everybody loves it.  We use it on all kinds of sandwiches.  Yum!  Feel free to substitute the veggies - my mom even used all cucumber instead of zucchini and it was super.  I've used mostly yellow summer squash, also.  Could use more peppers with few zucchini too - the overnight brining step really helps keep the veggie crisp.

Granola: the end of store cereal, Part 1

I had been conspiring to end store-cereal at our house.  It is the easy breakfast that costs $4 a box.  It's not that yummy or that healthy, not $4 worth.  So I figured I could get by making eggs (from our chickens), toast and pancakes and waffles (from the ground wheat and oats), or hot and fruity oatmeal (and other yummy grains my Mom delivers from Costco).  And then I discovered granola and our lives were forever changed!  We love granola.  Anna mixes it with her hands (and me, too) and eats it by the handful at every stage.  Ruby prefers it raw.  Peter loves it with fresh yogurt (coming soon in "the end of store cereal, part 2").  We like it hot and cold and stale and in ice cream.  It's awesome.

6 C old fashioned rolled oats
1 C brown sugar
2 C sliced almonds, unsweetened coconut flakes, chia seeds, sunflower seeds
1 t salt
1 t cinnamon (or nutmeg, allspice, whatever)
Combine these dry ingredients with spoon or hands.
2/3 C Oil (coconut or other)
2/3 C Honey (or agave or maple syrup)
Pour these wet ingredients over top, stir well with spoon.
Spread in a large casserole dish or 2 cookie sheets.  Bake at 300 for 10 minutes, stir, 10 minutes, stir, another 10 minutes - be careful not to brown too much or burn outside edges.  Have to watch carefully.

Notes:
I've already cut the sugar in this recipe.  These measurements give a nicely glazed granola with plenty sweetness to eat with plain yogurt.  Less sugar may make it more crumbly, but still YUM.  I prefer un-toasted nuts, so you can mix any nuts into the granola at the end or before the last bake.  This keeps more than a month in air-tight container (good luck hiding it that long from your eaters).  I always double the recipe and bake it in 2 large casseroles, on parchment paper makes clean-up easier.  I bake on 2 oven racks, bc crowding onto one rack makes the outsides burn.  I switch their location (top to bottom) at each stir.  My favorite add-in is fresh fruit and raw pecans.  Dried fruit is best added at end so it doesn't burn.

I'm not a food blogger, so no pictures :)

Feel like bragging?

I'm parked on the floor in front of my stupid smoking wood burner.  Why, oh why, can I not keep it burning.  It burns me up when my husband comes home and announces it is out.  Feels like the rest of my day's accomplishments just got canceled.
So, I'm bragging to my blog.  Because the only people who read this anyway are people who understand that I like verbal affirmation and they don't care if I brag because they like me so much that they even like my bragging.  So there.
Today I did a lot of things.  I'm going to make a bulleted list, for my own enjoyment.

• 3 loads of laundry (including the delicates load where I found the suit that I was a little freaking out about having lost - how exactly did I lose a suit? I thought I did.  So glad I have a washable suit.  It is very, very cute on me and also washable - so a huge victory that I found it.)
• Put away 6 piles of clothes in my own bedroom (a pile is defined: "as tall as you can stack without falling over" - so another great victory), including my husbands clothes partly.  That was very nice of me, I even hung up the shirts that he can iron.
• Purged an entire full garbage bag from my closet (I hate putting clothes in garbage bags, but because I do not shop, I have no nice bags to put them in) (including 8 bras? that was amazing.  How-ever do I have so many that do not fit me? Well, I guess it's attributable to pregnancy, nursing and the remarkable weight loss that nursing causes in me.  I kept 3 extra cute ones just in case the "milks" have some miraculous transformation.  Ha - not likely.)

Short break for cursing (in my head since beautiful 10-yr-old sympathetic son is watching me) at the woodburner, poking and prodding the stupid log that was seriously in flames just 3 minutes ago, dusting the stupid woodburner dirt off my knees and back to my stupid perch on the not-even-cozy (but at least I scrubbed floors yesterday for the first time since spring maybe) floor in front of the stupid woodburner.  Sorry about all the stupids.

• Ground the flour and baked an entire decent-looking loaf of bread.  Ground more flour and have rising another loaf's-worth for dinner's pizza crust.  Planned carrots/dip (oh yes, Kefir cheese ranch dip from yesterday's impressive list) and salad and maybe grapes to go with the one measly pizza that we will too-fast devour without some kind of side dish.

Short break to roll the offensive log to the back and stack a little boy-scout tripod of kindling onto the inept glowing coals hiding underneath.  I think I shall use only kindling.  I hate logs.  Forevermore I will just sit in front of this woodburner, load it with tiny sticks of flamable kindling and read blogs about other people's accomplishments and deep thoughts.

• I took a shower - with cute girl almost 2.  I had some clear thoughts in there about my business.  Hopefully I will remember them when I'm done venting here and maybe do them.
• I administrated independent-workers aged 10, 8 and 7 to do the work on their lists and be happy about it.  I fed them breakfast and lunch and read them a beautiful chapter of Pollyanna upon waking.  Got everything done on their school lists except the science notes I did not dictate to them.
• I drank 2 cups of coffee.  I ate a real lunch and an inadequate but wholesome butt-of-bread breakfast.
• I read a chapter in a good book to myself this morning and prayed a little bit during and after and since.
• I turned on an old CD in the kitchen rather than blowing my top in the kitchen.
• I called 4 people on my list and left 4 messages, while folding laundry.
• I remembered that almost-2's need naps.  So what if it was 3:30 and my husband already home, dang it.
• I cleared my calendar to better fit hunter's hunting schedule, got a nice thank-you for that.
• I remembered that I need a sitter 6 nights from now and actually procured one before the night-before - this is a new record in sitter-planning for me.

OK - fire barely burning but I'm feeling a little better.  Thanks. 

July so far

Birthday boy pierces sister's toy ball with his new pocket knife

Consumed Rooster salad and made 6 quarts of well-jelled broth

Made runny yogurt in my crockpot - yum with honey and blueberries

First crop of green beans

Stedman family sings Blessed Assurance and Worship the King all together - with microphones

Weeding cucumbers while my bees pollinate their blooms - very cool

Anna learns 2 new songs: Grace, Grace and Happy Birthday

Sweet Peas done producing. No more pea pods for my munching kiddos

Cheese cloth arrived, made kefir cheese that no one will eat - too sour.

Three separate incidents of trickery. Sweetly repentent hearts - thank you God!!

Anna takes a "bath" in little water tub on the deck - adorable photo op, no camera